//------------------------------// // Chapter 8. I Studied. (Wilderness, Part 8) (Reworked) // Story: Meta Gamer in Equestria: Odyssey // by reflective vagrant //------------------------------// The next few weeks passed about as one might expect. I got glares from the griffin and the zebra tried to give lessons. But the lessons proved to be unfruitful and she didn't understand why I was having so much trouble. I mean, I did kinda get some of the stuff like how to recognize sounds of different animals, behaviors, and that it was absolutely necessary that I never, ever—ever!—look at one of those chicken/lizards in the eyes even after it was dead. Her wording, not mine. Well, her drawings, not mine. This was more general wisdom and problem solving, and I got that stuff about as fast as any student that had to talk through pictures would. What I didn't get was how to draw upon the "life energy of everything" she spoke of before in order to do magic. Not that I didn't want to. I knew I definitely wanted to. She tried to get me to predict weather for the next day, or get a budding flower to bloom, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't replicate her ability. I made sure I was uttering the wording right, even though I had no idea what I was saying, and moving my hands as closely as I could to her hoof movements as I could. I tried all sorts of ways doing different things with my hands while mimicking her motions, even testing the buds before and after to see if I had even loosened them. The answer: Nope. Meanwhile, my senor student seemed to be a full on apprentice, doing a mixture of chores for the zebra off in the woods and studying. Strangely, he always seemed to study on his own without ever getting any instructions from the zebra. On a particular day, I was horribly failing to get the bud to bloom and feeling like an idiot. Meanwhile, my teacher had started looking at me with a certain glint in her eyes that I couldn't quite place as I tried practicing. She closed her eyes with a furled brow and ushered me to end my practice early, writing a quick picture of a sunrise to indicate we would try again tomorrow. When I saw her go straight to her meditation pad, I could tell she was running out of ideas. Dismissed for the day, I saw my griffin senor sitting at another spot around the hut, looking intently at the woods. Not having anything better to do, with my personal food supplies well in order and a quality knife made from the wolf bone and fur I salvaged, I sat down. I watched intently, making sure be ready to move away if he showed any sign of not wanting me around. I could tell he knew I was there, but he seemed to just ignore me, going through the motions of his own magic. When I started mimicking his mutterings and his talon motions with my hands, he gave me a weird look for a moment, then shook his head, laughed and continued on with a grin. The darn bird brain thought it was amusing that I was trying to mimic him! Well... To be honest, I couldn't blame him. I had no idea what he was even trying to do and it looked more advanced than what the zebra was trying to get me to learn. But with permission granted, I continued to mimic his movements, trying to feel anything flowing. Sadly, I was just as lost as before, but it felt good to have something even loosely like hands to follow instead of hooves. After a few minutes, he stopped his talon gestures and mutterings, then called out to the woods. “Siqusv!” I turned my head in the direction he called out to, finding about half a dozen weasels darting out of the woods, lining up in front of him. After forming a line and standing on their hind legs, the one furthest from me started chittering. It was then I realized his magic was letting him talk with the animals. With this in mind, I started up my mutterings and hand signs again. I did so as quietly as I could though, trying to not get him angry. I focused on what the zebra had described, asking the energy of all things living to work with me. It was then I started feeling something faint. Like whatever I was asking started to answer. It took a long while for this feeling to build, and by the time it felt right the final weasel was chittering away. "Epf vji dudkevsodit esi hivvoph xoti vu vji tduavt up vji xitvisp cusfis ug vjios vissovusy. Vjiy kommif ny..." It was only when the weasel had stopped that I realized I had been repeating the gibberish I was hearing with a questioning tone. Looking up, the griffin had his talon up in a stop position and was looking at me with the same glint in his eye as the zebra did when looking at my practice sessions. With a quick gesture of his talon, the last weasel continued. "Vjiy kommif upi ug ny nevit. Og ov xisip'v gus vji gedv vjev yua'wi ciip kiiqoph yuas xusf xovj vji cie..." The foreign words of the weasel returned to being just chittering noises shortly after the bottom half of the griffin's beak dropped. My jaw kinda fell slack in kind. I could kinda understand his surprise: I had just done magic. Useless magic because I didn't understand the local language, but magic. I couldn't tell if it was their kind of magic or me stumbling across Moss's druid spell, Speak with Animals. But either way it was a breakthrough. I tried doing it quickly again, but just couldn't muster up the energy in any less time than ten minutes. It was long enough for the griffin to alert our teacher of the development. I knew her finding out was inevitable, but I kinda wanted to fiddle around a bit more on my own first. "Ritual..." I muttered to myself as I got dragged back to my own practice area by the zebra, "It's just a ritual version, but that was a spell." A ritual spell was a way to cast a spell without using a spell slot, but it took a long time to cast and forced you to concentrate on virtually nothing else. Combined with the knowledge that I had accessed my spell slots to heal myself as a bear, I grinned. "I've touched the two separate components, now I just need to bring them together." It was days again before the ecstatic zebra would leave me alone. She had me do the animal talking spell with some success, but I got the feeling it didn't take quite like she expected. She seemed irritated that I couldn't get it up and running quick enough, and that it faded out faster than she would have liked. We still couldn't get me to get a flower bud to bloom though. This whole process was exhausting, with her trying to direct me, meditating and then directing me again with every spare moment she had on the days she didn't brave the woods to check on the village. This would have been fine, if it weren't for the fact she tried to get the griffin to sit down and help me practice too. He utterly refused to teach me for free after that first time. I could tell he could easily get the food he demanded I give from my own supplies for payment. That way he didn't have to teach me any more frequently than I managed to gather food. I could also tell that the zebra was the only thing that was forcing him to accept the food as payment with how they argued. I knew that if it weren't for her, he'd be charging me stuff I couldn't gather at best, or refusing to teach me at all. Not that the zebra's efforts mattered much in the end. While I was undeniably getting a better hang of hand gestures with the griffin, I still failed to get a single bud to loosen up, much less bloom. Getting animals to talk gibberish to me for ten minutes at a time after sitting around for ten minutes before hand was the best I could do. When the excitement over my first spell fluke died down, they had me go back to the old routine of managing my supplies and practicing mostly on my own save for the times that I gathered enough food to pay the griffin, which I had given up on after the zebra stopped pushing me to do it. We'd have to think of another way to get me the knowledge I needed to get to the village safely. One particular day, I came back with my harvest of wild peaches from the tree I had seen during my scouting. The fruit wasn't really all that ripe, nor would it ripen all that well plucked from the tree early, but the zebra had told me to thin the amount of fruit on the tree so that the remaining fruit grew right. In the meantime, the under ripe fruit could still be used for other things. At least that's what I presumed, when she traded me about a third of their weight in walnuts to me for them. I was cracking the walnuts and getting the meat out so I could dry them for my long term field pack when I saw something bizarre come walking out of the forest. Well, a few bizarre things really. One was what looked like a small yellow horse with a pink mane, and the other looked like something like a cross between a deer and a lime green bug. As I looked closer, both had the spark of intelligence in their eyes like the zebra did. "Are they from the villa..." I started to ponder aloud when I heard a small critter scuffling about in my walnut bowl. Looking down, I saw a small white bunny had hopped up on its hind legs and was eating out of the bowl that had the meat I had gathered from my walnuts in it. I shoved the bunny with a firm hand off of the bowl and into a swift but harmless tumble backwards. With a low growl I also issued a warning that it wasn't welcome to my food. Of all the things it could have done after picking itself back up, it just stuck its tongue out at me and went back for the bowl! At this point I was done playing nice. I cocked my hand back at the wrist good and firm, then landed a solid swat strait at its nose just as it was about to take another bite. The resulting reaction was priceless. It fell back in shock and wailed in pain somewhat like a cat hissing. Not two seconds later, I found that small yellow horse flying in my face with a set of wings I didn't catch before. "Jux fesi yua!" She called out, glaring at me with eyes befitting an enraged demoness. "Ephim fofp'v fitiswi vjev! Yua duamf jewi katv vumf jon ov xetp'v gus jon!" In spite of glaring right back at her, I found myself backing up from that stare of hers. When I finally backed into a tree, I hardened my glare while she continued spitting vinegar flavored words at me in her strange language. I could tell she was angry, but one thing that got me angry too was people getting in my face about stuff I honestly didn't feel they had any right to. So... Yea. I think her glare had an opposite effect on me than it normally would have in that particular moment. "Back off!" I more barked than spoke, knowing I'd have to use body language and tone more than words. As she only got in my face more, so much so that her nose was touching mine, I stealthily moved my arm into what I figured would be a blind spot underneath her. A split second later, her vinegar words stopped as I had the small winged horse by the throat, tightly. Were it not for what she had been doing a moment before, I would probably taken pity on the efforts she made to struggle out of my grip. She looked so helpless. Instead I gave as solid as a throw my weak arm could do. Considering how she felt like I wouldn't normally be able to hold her up with one arm when she stopped flapping her wings, I managed to toss her pretty far. She bounced a solid... two, maybe three yards. "I said back off." I heard the bug/deer call out as it charged at me before I could go back to my walnuts. Although all I caught was the tone, I knew what he meant. He didn't like me treating his friend that way. I managed to lock eyes with it just in time to see it shift into a bear and take a swipe at me. I dodged around the tree, with bark flying off and hitting my backside as I retreated. "That's a nice bear form you have there, but-" I called out as I circled around the back to face the critter again. I shifted into my copy of Ash and gave the bug/bear a solid roar. '-mine's bigger than yours!' I thought to myself as I roared. He swung at me and I swung back at him in a vicious dance. He would do his best to dodge and shake off my blows, while I only dodged just enough for the wounds to not be killing blows, landing more blows myself with the openings it bought me. Sure, it hurt, but I wasn't exactly focused on pain right then in the middle of my anger. We both got pretty bloody, but with me using my magic to heal myself I knew I could outlast him. I could tell with how he dodged around, his wounds wouldn't heal like mine and would persist between forms. He was a shapeshifter like me, but it was clear as day to me that we played with different sets of rules and my angry mind was dead set on exploiting that. After the bug/bear and I had slashed each other up good, the zebra managed to knock us out with the same powder she had used on the wolves. * * * We must have shifted back to our natural forms in our sleep. After we woke and the zebra had separated us, I could see contempt in the bug horse's eyes. I did my best not to return that look of contempt, but I made sure he could see my unharmed body while the zebra bandaged his wounds. I wanted to make sure he knew he had lost that fight and that picking another was a bad idea. After the zebra pointed over to the corner with the cowering winged horse and the little bunny, I could tell that the zebra wasn't to pleased with me. I did my best to convey a "they started it!" gesture, but I could tell that while she understood well enough what I meant, she still wasn't too happy on having to clean up my mess. I gave a reluctant huff and reached for my backpack. I pulled out my healing potions and rolled them towards her. When she gave me an odd look, I just turned away in silence. With my peace offering accepted and used to treat the bug's gashes and then the winged horse's bruises, we sat down and started communications as best as we could with drawings. * * * After a few crude questions, I discovered a few things. The winged horse was an animal caregiver of some sort—if the word "animal" had any clear definition anymore—here guiding the bug to the shaman, and the bug was here to seek out the shaman to help his kind in some way. But one detail in particular popped up that had me distracted. "The path to the village is safe now?" I asked the zebra coldly as I pointed to the picture the bunny had drawn of them walking through the forest to the hut. The spoken words were more to tell her the tone I had. The quick drawing of a chicken/lizard was how I actually asked the question. The zebra solemnly re-drew the crude map between the village and her hut and the chicken/lizards between. She then pointed to the griffin and started stomping out multiple renditions of the chicken/lizards. As she did this, I called upon the magic that made the tingling sensation at the back of my neck to help me read her. The tingle showed me a twitching of an ear, and a subtle unsteadiness of her hoof. She was only telling a half truth. The chicken/lizards were being cleared out by her student, but she was trying to hide the fact that the path had been safe for a while now, if it had even been dangerous at all. I promptly drew a picture of the sunrise, followed by a swift strike through the forest on her map from the hut to the village. "Then I'm going to the village in the morning," I declared.