Omnimage

by Simon Archer

  “Be very quiet,” Delilah whispered over to me, reaching her toes out to step toward her pile of armor, “slow movements. Nothing sudden or jarring. Do not look panicked, or it will panic. We have to keep it calm, or it’ll start shouting.”

  “Why?” I said, bouncing my eyes between her and the fluffy thing. “Is it a loud shout? What do you think this is? Do you know?”

  “That’s a Zedmakian yeti baby,” she answered, slowly pulling herself off of me and across the floor. “If it’s here, then we are in terrible danger. The babies are never left alone by their violently overprotective mothers, which could rip both the arms off a regenerating troll like they were made of wet paper. If the little one’s right here, his mother is not far away and will perceive everything as a threat that needs its arms ripped off.”

  “You seem pretty shaken up,” I pointed out. “You can jump off walls and move faster than the eye can see. I wouldn’t imagine any beast would get you like this. Are yetis really that terrifying here?”

  “These aren’t just any yetis, Jeremiah,” she violently whispered, nearly breaking her own rule to argue with me, “Zedmakian yetis are taller than another one of you standing on your shoulder and deadlier than four groups of the two of us. We’d need at least five more mages at my level of training just to distract it long enough for the two of us to run away, and that’s only with the females. I just got this body, thank you very much, and a lot of time to make up for what I’ve wasted inside this stupid tomb, and I’m not going to let it get torn apart after having it for a few hours. There’s still a lot I want to do with it, and I was just about to, no thanks to this beast showing up at the worst time.”

  “Damn, that sounds powerful.” I loudly walked over to the baby yeti. “I wonder if you’re going to be just as powerful, little guy?”

  “What the hell are you doing?” the unliving monk warrior quietly and quickly zoomed over to stop me by holding my shoulders. “Did you not listen to a single word I just said? We need to find a hiding space now before his mother comes around to kill us! Let’s try that other room while we still have our arms.”

  “Eh, no real point in hiding when we’re safe,” I knelt down to it as it walked over to sniff around me. “The mother’s not anywhere near here. I doubt he even has a mother. Unless he’s been plucked from his family somehow. That’d be a little sad.”

  “You don’t know that!” Delilah briefly forgot to whisper before resuming her harsh, breathy sneak-speak. “What if she’s waiting around the corner? Baby yetis don’t leave their mothers until they’re old enough to hunt on their own, which is when they’re at the arm-ripping stage of their life. There is always an arm-ripper among yetis, and the mother will be no exception to that.”

  “The mother doesn’t exist. This is my familiar.” I picked up the little yeti baby in my arms as it snuggled me. Absolutely adorable. All the cuteness of a puppy, all the manual dexterity and personality of a toddler, and all the deadly teeth of a Bengal tiger. “If anything, I’m this little guy’s mom. Or dad. Whatever, don’t overthink magical summoning into existence. And are we even near Zedmak… ia?”

  “… no.” The embarrassed revenant loosened up and came to look at the new pet. “And the region is just called ‘Zedmak’-- Oh, my gods, that is so precious. I’ve only known him for these few seconds, and I already know that I’d stab you to death right in the neck if you let anything bad happen to him.”

  “Jesus.” I took one step away from the crazy lady with my yeti familiar. “Maybe we should take an emotional step down the intensity scale and just calm down.”

  “Okay,” Delilah took a deep breath. “It’s your fault, though. I was ready for another round, and I’m operating at peak levels of energy and warmth.”

  “Now that we’re talking about temperature, though, I’m starting to feel cold.” I took a good look at my new yeti and all of its luscious, white, soft, warm fur. “Now, hear me out on this one, but what if--?”

  “NO!” Delilah snatched the yeti from my hands, seeing my intent to shave the defenseless, magic-born animal. “Don’t you dare touch one hair on his little head! I wasn’t joking around when I said I would stab you in the neck. I don’t have a knife on me, Jeremiah. Think about the implications!”

  “What the hell am I supposed to do about being naked?” I put my hands up in questioning defiance. “I can’t walk around the world above naked. And it’s freezing as balls down here.”

  “You’re not skinning this precious gift of fluffy adorableness.” Delilah took a few more steps away from me with my own familiar in tow. “Take something from one of these tombs if you’re really that cold.”

  “You want me to commit grave robbery?” I said, watching the little yeti paw the air in my direction to try to get back to me. “In a magic tomb filled with monsters? What if I enact some ancient curse or something?”

  She didn’t have to know that I was immune to curses. It was the principle of the matter. She was perfectly willing to let me get cursed by desecrating a magic grave, and that wasn’t cool. Friends didn’t let friends get cursed by tomb-robbing.

  “I was the ancient curse on these tombs, you dope,” she bounced the yeti baby gently like a human toddler. “You’ve already handled me more than well enough, to say the least. If there’s another ghost around these graves, maybe you’ll get another ghost to turn into a beautiful warrior. That’s just more for you! Go get some ghost clothes.”

  “Pretty sure finding you was a beautiful fluke.” I walked over to one of the sarcophagi. “An amazing and miraculous fluke, but a fluke nonetheless. And why are you hoping for another ghost woman?”

  “The more, the merrier,” she said. “It’s not like I need you to myself all the time. Let’s see who else we can get in our party. Except, don’t get any more ghost girls. That’s my area of expertise. If we fight another ghost and it turns out to be a girl, we’re banishing her to the afterlife. If you mess up that spell that fixed me, you might die, and I would kill that ghost bitch myself for putting you up to it. Oh, I wonder if we can find a nice living elven girl for you!”

  “Back up.” I stopped before cracking open the sarcophagus. “You actually want more girls around? Is that a ‘girl-power’ thing? Some solidarity between comrades of the same gender or something? I’m more than fine with not having any more dudes in the party.”

  “I can’t be the only one having all the fun with you.” Delilah paused to brace herself while the baby yeti tapped her face with open palms a few times before continuing. “Your gift isn’t one you can just hide in one girl for the rest of your life. You’re going to meet more girls anyway, and they’re going to want a bit of what I’m getting, so I might as well enjoy my time either way. I thought you’d be excited about this, Naked Knight. Most guys would kill for an opportunity like this, wouldn’t they?”

  “I am excited!” I quickly stated for the record, returning to opening the stone lid, “I just didn’t expect you to be the one to suggest it first. Or at all. The thought honestly never came up as a possibility for me. To be absolutely clear, so there’s no confusion in the future if the scenario were to come up, you’re saying you are okay with and even actively want to recruit more women into our traveling group, and on top of that, you also are perfectly fine with and also actively want them to sleep with me? Is that what I’m hearing from you right now?”

  “Yes…” She looked at me as if I had a third eye growing out of my head. “You’re looking at me like I’m a leper or something. How is this strange? It’s one of the most common relationships. Where did you come from before, a tribe of monkeys?”

  “A place where this level of casualness about the subject is not the norm,” I searched the coffin, finding the body and the clothing on the body were perfectly preserved. “The kind of relational situation you’ve just proposed for our group is on the fringe of acceptable models back where I came from.”

  “What, can only noble lords do that in your home?” she scoffed. “Do
you have to be rich enough to have the ‘privilege’ of sharing and growing their communities?”

  “Well…” I really thought about it as I stripped the body of its valuables. “Kinda, yeah. The rich get away with whatever they want, and the rest of us are sort of left with a bunch of rules to follow along with.”

  “They sound like savages.” The revenant let the white wolver-ape child crawl over her shoulders. “A bunch of savages.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  After successfully and completely accomplishing what would have been a felony theft in my world, I put on the new clothes, a simple set of chainmail, and a tunic with a coat of arms like a griffin with antlers on it. Along with that, I pocketed all of the jewelry he had on him and sifted through the rest of the coffins for more valuables.

  Hey, they weren’t using them anymore, and I needed to get some money together once I finally got out of this place, if only to get some food. I was starting to feel the hunger in my stomach.

  “Pass Bodo over here.” I held my hands out to grab the yeti from Delilah. “I want to see what he can do.”

  “Bodo?” she laughed as she let little ‘Bodo’ switch carriers. “That’s your name for a mighty terror from the mountain peaks of Zedmak? That’s what you want people to be shouting as they face your familiar in battle? ‘Striking fear into the hearts of weary travelers and bandit warlords alike, it’s… Bodo.’ ‘Bodo the Bloody-Handed.’ ‘Frostking Bodo.’ See how that fails to evoke the horror of the powerful beast it might one day become? I wouldn’t even name my own pet Bodo, vicious beast or no.”

  “It is up for changing later.” I tickled the little chimpan-puppy’s tummy. “Besides, it’s not even a real animal. It’s made of magic. It might not grow up from this size. Bodo is a perfectly acceptable name for an adorably fake animal like this.”

  “If it’s not a real animal, then why are you tickling it?” The sly warrior gave me a look like she’d caught me in a trap, watching me play with my pet. “Would it feel any real joy from you showering it with attention? How are you going to justify that, wizardling?”

  “Pack bonding,” I explained quickly. “I am simply expressing an evolutionary survival instinct that encourages intimate socialization between adults and the young of their family groups so that they can pass down the continued thriving of the group as a whole from generation to generation.”

  “Of course,” she rolled her eyes, “all of that makes perfect sense and wasn’t just made up on the spot in this very moment to make you sound smart.”

  “It could have been genuine!” I defended myself. “Now excuse me while I stare at my magic yeti baby for an uncomfortably long amount of time. Lead the way for me until I’m finished.”

  “Excuse me?” she crossed her arms defiantly. “Are you ordering me around?”

  “A little bit, yeah,” I said, “I mean, I don’t know where we’re going, and I did give you that body you’re flaunting around now. I think that deserves at least one command.”

  “If you weren’t so handsome…” she relented, marching forward. “I better get an amazing time with you when we find a good spot to camp again.”

  I followed behind, keeping track of her through my peripheral while I checked on Bodo’s specialties:

  Bodo (Jeremiah’s Familiar), spirit Lv 5

  Health: 500 Magic: 500

  Armor: 25 Aegis: 25

  Abilities: Bonded, Mountain Strength

  Bonded: This creature is bonded to a mage and will grow with the mage’s increasing power in new ways beyond what the animal it appears to be is capable of.

  +Ability: Magic Pocket - can disappear and reappear out of a pocket dimension within 10 meters of the bonded wizard at any time it wishes;

  +all score based on bonded wizard’s level, new abilities as the wizard grows their magical specialties;

  +resistance to mind-altering effects.

  +Familiar subtype - Yeti Ability: Mountain Strength

  Mountain Strength: Growing up on the mountain, the creature carries its strength with them wherever they go, standing as an imposing and immovable force to its foes.

  +4x Strength score bonus for all load-bearing and load-maneuvering activities;

  +4x Resolve to resist falling over.

  +Climbing without penalty

  +500 cold resistance

  That was pretty nifty. I wondered how an omnimage was going to affect a familiar’s potential growth? Did they actually grow, as in becoming more adult-shaped, with time? That had its upsides and downsides, it seemed, based on the situation. Of course, I could have always pocketed Bodo whenever he didn’t fit anywhere. That didn’t seem to be a problem anytime soon, but I’d be cooking up a solution on the back burner while we figured some more things out.

  Man, I hoped to get a magic tutor soon. I’m sure Delilah could have taught me some martial arts and how to better channel magic through my body, but I needed some instructions on all of these increasing rules and features. Like, maybe a list of all the different mages and what they could have expected to get for their evolutions. That would have been nice. Stumbling around in the dark was getting old really quickly.

  But the results of leveling up and growing my magic powers were already starting to show. I was in better shape than an MMA fighter but without the slowly crippling internal injuries. Not to beat around the bush, but I wasn’t exactly ‘top ten lovers in the state’ when I was working at that stupid office. Here, though, I could have kept going on as long as I needed to. If working out produced these kinds of results, I might have done it more often. I wondered if that would have changed anything regarding my initial scores. Probably not. I was under the impression that the things regular mages were able to do here were going to be leagues ahead of the most impressive feats humans were capable of.

  15

  “Hey, here’s a thought,” I said after a fair bit of walking through the monotonous mausoleum maze we were stuck in. “Now that things have finally settled down, we’ve met, we’ve broken in your new body, and I have my familiar, would you tell me the basics of everything you remember from your time alive, so I at least have some understanding of what I’m going to run into when we get out of here? That seems like a smart plan. I need to know things about this world before we run into it. If people start suspecting that I’m foreign, they won’t let us into many places, and if I look too foreign, then who knows what kind of trouble that could attract. Lay down all your knowledge on me, Teach.”

  “Um, okay,” Delilah shrugged, “where should I start?”

  “Races?” I tentatively decided. “Elves, orcs, goblins, that sort of thing. What are we dealing with here? Who’s the ‘who’s who’?”

  “There’s three of them right there.” She shook her head in confusion. “Are you sure you need me to tell you this? You already know about those, even though you’re from another world. Can’t you use that magic vision to get some information out?”

  “It doesn’t work that…” I cut myself off as I went through what I knew about the Analyst ability. ‘Slightly above jack-shit’ was the total sum of knowledge. “Can it give me information about the world like that? It doesn’t seem to know more than I’m able to look at so far. It mostly just compiles the information I find around myself and translates it into numbers based on the system.”

  “The system?” she asked.

  “I honestly don’t know the whole thing myself.” I shrugged. “I just know I see screens that give me numbers on people’s attributes and such. It’s a bit implicit that it has more information, simply because it keeps giving me teasers about the powers I’ll get when I level up more. But does it know about the world above, and can it show me what it knows now?”

  “How do we find out?” She started poking at my arm. “Do you just need to bring up a screen and see if you can find more information from there? Is there a trigger? Is the trigger the same as when you were about to summon your familiar? Do I need to strip off my armor again?”


  “Well, whatever happened last time, it got us Bodo,” I said, letting the abominable snow toddler crawl onto my back. “So, I mean, if you’re up for it…”

  “Do you honestly believe our flirting and foreplay unlocked a magical ability for you?” She had her doubts written on her raised eyebrow. “Let me give you your first magic lesson: carnal pleasures are magical experiences, but they do not improve anyone’s magic, except maybe blood berserkers. They only need to get their blood pumping to grow their own magic.”

  “I have blood berserker magic,” I said, only confident in the idea of blood berserkers being included in the ‘omni’ of omnimage. “I should have the same ability, too. Who knows how much magical development I could get with enough vigorous exercise?”

  “That’s…” She had no rebuttal. “Alright, I’ll start stripping.”

  “Oh, my god,” I couldn’t believe how easily that worked. “Where have you been all of my life, you sexy vision of perfection?”

  “Good to know that feeling goes both ways,” She began to undo the latches for her gauntlets. “I should really get some more accessible armor. This whole process is--”

  “Who are you people?” a squeaky voice from in front of us interrupted Delilah before she’d gotten her first latch all the way off. “What are you doing in Chief Gak’Nak’s territory?”