Chapter 1: Falling for the First Time...and Then the Second

Her feet left the gravel of the roof. For a delirious moment, Cecilia thought she’d learned to fly. Her arms came out to either side, pinwheeling as the world tilted. She didn’t scream; breath rushed into her lungs in a single shocked inhale as she stumbled forward. Over the too-low ledge on the edge of the roof and into the air.

Someone pushed me. That hard pressure on her back wasn't wings or wind, but hands, pushing up and out and over, and she was helpless to do anything but follow.

The world spun. Light flashed off the windows of the skyscraper along the way, blinding her as she twisted to look behind her. The roof slipped away before her vision cleared. Cecilia was suspended between sky and street. Then she fell. The wind whistled. The wind howled.

The pavement loomed.

* * *

Cecilia’s first thought after she died was a wordless surprise that she could have any thoughts at all. Not that she was an atheist, exactly - she had always hoped there was an afterlife, and she went to Mass on Christmas, Easter, and when her mother started making noises about respecting family traditions. But when it came down to it, being able to think was a shock. More than thought, there was sensation. Form. And a remarkable lack of pain. Count that on the plus side.

On the other hand, as her awareness began to extend beyond just the revelation that she had a body that wasn’t currently smeared across city pavement, Cecilia realized that she was suspended against a wall by her wrists, her toes only barely touching the ground. She opened her eyes.

Is this Hell? She didn’t think she’d done anything bad enough to go to Hell, even if she’d had concerns about some of the projects they’d been working on recently. But it looked like Hell. A dungeon of moldering stone walls, lit by glowing lights that hung suspended on no string or pole that she could see. It smelled like Hell, or what she imagined Hell might smell like. Acrid and sharp, with undertones of sulfur, blood, and other chemicals she couldn’t identify. Mold, too. It crawled up the legs of the large tables that filled the room. Each table was stacked with what looked like a mad scientist’s fever dream. Bulbous metal and glass vessels smoked. Smooth, twisted limbs drooped over the edges of the closest tables, and Cecilia felt a scream of horror welling upwards.

The sound caught in her throat before it could escape. They weren’t human. The light gleamed oddly over the bloodless skin; they were some sort of mannequin limbs. More mannequins hung on the walls, limp and stiff. Like...

She wasn’t alone. As her eyes adapted to the pale, dim light, she realized that there was a hunched figure moving slowly through the tables, muttering to itself. Bent over with age, with a shock of white hair that hadn’t been brushed in days, wearing what looked like a robe, the fabric covered in burns and stains.

Cecilia swallowed. “Hello?” Her voice was a rusty croak, unrecognizable.

The figure stopped. It - no, he, judging by the scruffy beard - squinted at the space where she hung.

“Hello?” She tried again.

This time, the man let out a squawk of surprise. He scrambled around the tables, sending a couple of arms clattering to the floor in his haste. Cecilia tried to jerk back as he arrived - he had an undeniable smell about him, and it wasn’t pleasant - but there was nowhere to go. Foul air wafted up as he shouted, “It moved! It spoke! Tool! Get in here!”

Cecilia opened her mouth to explain that she wasn’t an it . Her mouth opened, then stuck there, gaping as some thing lumbered into view. Seven feet tall, at least, and carved from wood with three sets of arms, and a single pair of legs. Crudely hammered metal joints creaked with its approach. Instead of a neck, its head was set directly into the front of its chest, and consisted of a single, polished glass eye that glowed green, and a small, misshapen mouth with hinged 'lips'. “I’m in Hell, aren’t I?” she finally managed to whisper. “It wasn’t suicide! Someone killed me!”

“It’s speaking!” The old man did a crazed dance before her hung body, then flung himself at the creature, trying to dance with it, instead. The wood creature let him fling its arms this way and that, and even shuffled back and forth slowly, an impassive enabler of joy. “I knew it,” the old man crowed. “It was worth it! Heart of star opal, only thing that could work - souls are too powerful for anything less!”

“Excuse me.”

He ignored her, jabbering to the impassive wood-thing, “Forbidden arts my crusty ass! Spontaneous soul development has nothing to do with gods. Concentrate enough mana into a matrix capable of holding it, containing it, and it crystalizes into a newborn soul. Mine to shape. Mine to command!”

None of that sounded good. It didn’t even sound right; she was twenty-five years old. Hardly a newborn anything. “Excuse me!”

The old man broke off in mid rant, and swung back around to stare up at her with rheumy brown eyes, a slight gray ring of age around the darker irises. “It speaks sense without having to be taught. Inherent skill? Does it have a class, I wonder?”

That was enough. “I am not an IT!” Her voice boomed, and the old man recoiled in shock. “My name is Cecilia Rojas, and I am not a baby. You didn’t create me, someone killed me, and I need to find out who! And tell my mother I’m not dead, before she kills me. Again.”

He blinked up at her. “...peculiar. Very peculiar. The ritual was supposed to create a soul. Not just scoop one up at random.”

“Well, it didn’t. Can you let me down, please?”

His lips pursed. “Cecilia, hm? Not the name I would have chosen. Euphonia. Your name was going to be Euphonia.”

“Thank God I came with one of my own, then,” she muttered, then jerked against the restraints. “Down? Please? And maybe--” for the first time, she looked down at her body, and this time she did scream. Something was wrong with it. And she was naked. “Clothes! I need clothes!”

“Tool, take her down,” the old man barked. There was a pinched, disappointed set to his face as the six armed...whatever it was lumbered up and unhooked the restraints before lowering her down to the floor. She immediately hid behind its bulk from the old man. He snorted even as he stared at her, his wrinkled brow drawn down. “I’ve already seen it all. I carved it all. As a vessel for my finest work. You’re sure you’re this Cecilia person, then?”

“Very sure. I’d show you my driver’s license, but I left it in my other body.” She shuddered. “Which is now smushed on a street.”

The old man’s glare was blistering. “Not just a trespasser, but a smartass about it, too. You’re wrecking my project, I’ll have you know.”

Cecilia scowled back. “Only one of us just got tossed off a building, viejo. I think I win the worst day contest.”

“What is one life compared to the greatest alchemical revelation in history?” He reached for a tool on the nearest table, a long and jagged thing that glowed blue when he took it in his hand. “Now, we have to figure out how to get you out of my golem before you contaminate the core any further. How can I create a new soul with a soul already in there, taking up space? I can’t! Obviously.”

Cecilia stopped shaking her hands - she didn’t actually need to return feeling to the fingertips but felt better for doing the motion anyway - and eyed him warily. “Get me...out of it? But where would I go?”

He shrugged. “Don’t know. Don’t care. Not interested in old souls - no one is going to realize my genius if I go around showing a soul I just caught like some sort of cursed necromancer. No, no, no. I need a new soul, and star opals don’t grow on trees. The things I had to do to get that one...You’ll have to come out! Should have known better than to upset my experiment in the first place.”

“Wait--”

“Tool, grab the vessel. If we extract that garbage fast enough, the essence taint should be minimal.”

She leaped backwards just as Tool spun around, its torso turning 180 degrees without its legs moving an inch, and made a grab at her with all six arms. It was a much more powerful jump than she expected; she crashed into a table full of beakers and other vessels. Strange chemical clouds exploded around her as she rolled backwards and over the table, instinctively catching herself on her hands and knees on the other side. The chemicals stung and tickled at her skin, but from the way the old man screamed and scrambled back, the effect was clearly stronger for him. “Tool! Catch it! Before it wrecks the atelier!”

Oh, I like the sound of that. There was nothing quite like a little chaos to cover an escape. As Tool lunged forward, Cecelia skidded to the side, swiping at another table full of breakable equipment. Multicolored explosions followed in her wake as chemicals not meant to mingle found each other and made violent, exothermic love. The room was rapidly filling with greasy smoke, streaked with unnatural colors that occasionally sparked new explosions. It also forced the old man further back from Cecilia, and despite having four more arms than she did, Tool was clearly not meant for speed or grace. It stomped after her as she ran for the only escape she could see: some sort of hole in the floor, from where the sound of rushing water could be faintly heard.

From the bucket and rope arrangement attached to the side, it appeared to serve the purpose of a well, but if the water was moving, it had to be going somewhere. Cecilia scrambled to the edge, and looked down into a void.

It sounded like a long way to the water. She’d already died from falling once today. Then again...she looked back as Tool swatted a table out of the way and lunged for her. Cecilia sucked in a breath, and for the second time in what felt like less than an hour, pitched forward into a dizzying fall.

Behind and above, the old man screamed in rage.

Cecilia also screamed--in fear. She twisted as she bounced off the side of the well, trying to get into a diving position. The watery roar beneath her grew louder by the moment. Please be deep, please be deep, please be--

Cold. The abrupt transition from air to icy water knocked the breath out of Cecilia, and a current much stronger than she’d been expecting sent her into a wild tumble through the darkness. Water filled her mouth, her throat, as she was tossed into walls and some unseen columns. Even with the peculiar toughness of her body, it hurt. She flailed towards the surface.

Her head broke the water and she sucked in a burning gasp; wherever she was, it was dark in the way that nothing in the city ever was. An unyielding blanket wrapped around her skull, leaving her blind to water, air, or stone.

Cecilia almost lost the breath she’d so greedily sucked down when she slammed into another column. She grabbed at it, wrapping her arms around it and holding tight as the water tried to pull her away. It was a perilous respite, but she took it anyway, spitting out ice cold water and trying to get her bearings. The old man’s voice echoed - but faintly. She must have been carried a fair distance by the current in those awful moments. Now I know how it feels to die AND to be tossed in a washer. So many learning experiences.

The giggle was hysterical and exhausted. Her body was going numb, half submerged in the freezing water and pressed against the icy stone column. She could almost feel it sucking out vital heat. The longer she clung, the less energy she’d have to swim; if she wasn’t in the - what did he call it - the golem's body, she’d probably already have hypothermia.

So, Cecilia let go. She pushed off into the current’s flow, and let the water carry her, but kept her hands out in front, catching obstacles and pushing away from them before they could slam into her at speed. The furious echoes of the mad scientist, or whatever he was, faded into the white noise of the water. Her body grew heavier as the cold penetrated even whatever protections the body had.

She held out as long as she could, kicking and flailing to try and keep her limbs moving. The water was slowing, the noise going quiet. How much of that was real, and how much of it was the hypothermia setting in? Dying twice in one day. That had to be some sort of record, wasn’t it?

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

No.

Not happening. She couldn’t do anything about being pushed off the office building by some complete asshole while on her fucking lunch break but Cecilia could do something about this, and she wasn’t ready to give up. She started to swim again, forcing numb limbs into furious motion. It wasn’t pretty; she didn’t even like swimming. But if the water wanted to kill her, it was going to have to do better.

It gave up before she did, but just barely. Some freezing eternity later, when Cecilia’s fury had just about spent itself to the last, sodden embers, she realized that she could see. There was light coming from somewhere. She churned her limbs, feeling joints scream from the effort. Suddenly, there were stars above, faint white points like breadcrumbs spilled on black velvet. Trees, rocks, bushes - they were ghostly sketches in the night, but that was more than she’d had.

Cecilia struck for the shore; the river had widened out of the mouth of wherever she’d been spat out from. But it also slowed, and she was able to drag herself up to the bank and collapse into the marshy mud.

She was alive.

[Level Up! Stat Points to Distribute. Skill Points to Distribute. Choose (1) Technique.]

What the fuck?

The voice, she recognized instantly, wasn’t one that she heard with her ears. It didn’t come from the night air, broken only by the curious buzz and chirrup of disturbed frogs trying to figure out what had crawled into their territory. It wasn’t even a voice at all, really; it was a knowledge that spooled itself out in her brain.

And...level up? Cecilia was no stranger to video games. Had the mad scientist programmed her with some bizarre game? She lay in the mud, too exhausted to move or even think about the mud seeping into crevices on her body that generally she never wanted to associate with the word seep, and croaked, “What level am I?”

[You are Level Two. You have Stat Points to Distribute. You have Skill Points to Distribute. You should choose a Technique.]

“Level...two? In what?” She remembered the old man muttering, now, about whether she had a class. She did, as it happened. More than one.

[You are a Level Two Ensouled Golem, class rank Unique, subclass Otherworldly Soul, class rank Elite.]

“Class rank? What does that mean?” The knowledge flooded her mind; classes had a rank based on how many people in the world held them at any time: common, uncommon, rare, elite, and - apparently - unique. A unique class, obviously, was one that only one person in the world held at that time. An Elite class, on the other hand…

“There are other souls from my...world? This definitely isn’t Earth. But not in golems. Because that one’s unique. In what, then? Other people?” There was no answer. Whatever the not-voice was, it seemed to be more of a help file than an actual conversation.

Her eyes slid closed. She needed to get up and get moving. That old man didn’t seem like the type to give up just because his creation tossed herself down a well to get away from him. He’d send Tool after her at the very least. How far had the water brought her? Surely not far enough. She needed to get up, keep moving. Find some damn clothes.

She needed to…

She needed…

Cecilia slept.

* * *

When she awoke, the sun was high enough that she could see it through the trees, and there was a black bird on her chest, pecking at her chin. Its beak went tink tink tink on her skin, which seemed to fascinate the large bird. As Cecilia’s eyes opened and fixed on it, it raised its glossy black head and returned a beady gaze. It let out a rusty quork .

“Geoffme,” she mumbled.

It bent its head and started pecking at her chin again. Cecilia swatted weakly at it, and it hopped away in a flutter of protest and indignation. She rubbed her chin; the bird’s explorations hadn’t hurt it at all. Her ‘skin’ was cool and smooth to the touch under her fingers, although she didn’t detect any dulling of sensation. Pain, yes; despite the fact that everything hurt, it wasn’t hard to realize that she shouldn’t have gotten out of last night without a broken bone or two, at least.

She hastily checked. Her peculiar body was covered with half-dried mud, and there were cracks in the skin, as if she were made of some sort of porcelain, but nothing seemed to be shattered entirely. She poked one of the larger fractures on her thigh. It hurt. It also seeped a pale green liquid, which evaporated with contact with the air.

“Freaky,” she murmured. And then she poked it again. The skin didn’t react like human skin, and the fluid acted more like leaking oil than blood. Aside from the evaporation. Just how different from a human was she in her current form?

Cecilia took stock. Her skin was that peculiar substance - some sort of carved rock, she decided after closer study and washing a little with river water, not porcelain - and had hair-fine joints where her limbs and fingers bent. She could sense warmth and cold and pressure and pain, although the last seemed naturally dulled, and although she could sense intensities of cold, it didn’t discomfort her as much as it should. Idly, she wished for a lab where she could do some actual testing.

Another oddity: she lacked all body hair, from the tips of her toes all the way up to the crown of her head. She didn’t even have eyelashes. Other things were also lacking; the golem body was androgynous, with only the barest suggestion of what could be either breasts or pecs, and nothing but smooth skin between her legs. Her skin was a uniform shade, a sort of medium brown that wasn’t that far off from her natural tone, although the stone had small, almost golden striations in it, barely visible, obviously some natural pattern from the substance.

In short, she doubted that anyone would mistake her for human, even if she wasn’t as obviously off-model as the six-armed Tool. And she was injured. Did she heal like a person, or would she have to find someone to repair her? As far as she could tell, she didn’t even have a pulse, so what sort of doctor did you ask to handle that?

Cecilia ruthlessly suppressed the urge to panic. Panic could happen later. Now...hadn’t the voice said something about leveling up? “Stat points, skill points, and a technique. What are those?”

No sooner did she say it than the knowledge bloomed in her mind. Stat points were used to boost her basic statistics, which made skills more effective and increased her basic health and spiritual pools. Skill points unlocked support skills and passive abilities, while techniques were active abilities that required her spiritual energy to use.

“Okay,” she said, slowly. “What are my stats, and how many points do I have to add?”

Then she yelped as a stylized human form appeared before her eyes. It suspended itself in the air, arms and legs spread, and was surrounded by six glowing circles. Each circle had text, which sharpened into focus when Cecilia concentrated on it:

[Might: 10 - Base: 5 - Bonus from Golem Type: +5]

[Grace: 10 - Base: 5 - Bonus from Golem Type: +5]

[Endurance: 10 - Base: 5 - Bonus from Golem Type: +5]

[Intellect: 5 - Base: 5 - Penalty from Golem Type: -5 - Bonus from Otherworldly Soul Class: +5]

[Perception: 5 - Base: 5 - Penalty from Golem Type: -5 - Bonus from Otherworldly Soul Class: +5]

[Soul: 10 - Base: 5 - Penalty from Golem Type: -5 - Bonus from Otherworldly Soul Class: +10]

And at the very bottom of the image:

[Stat Points to Distribute: 6]

“Well, there’s your problem, creepy old man,” Cecilia muttered after looking over the image. “Golem type people get nasty penalties to these stats. I’m guessing if you’ve got zeros in those, then you don’t have a mind, or a soul. You have to have a class that offsets that, I guess.”

The voice was silent. “Right, fine, be that way.” She braced herself, then said, “Okay, before we spend those, let’s take a look at skills.”

The vision changed, becoming four branching images that reminded her all too much of playing video games. “Skill trees. Of course you’d have skill trees. This is a weird place, Voice. Where am I, anyway?”

No response, although Cecilia hadn’t really expected one. The voice didn’t seem to respond to any comments, or any questions, that weren’t directly about the mechanics of the...world? Game? Some sort of purgatory?

Cecilia focused on the skill trees. There were four, two from each of her classes. Ensouled Golem got the ‘Elemental Golem’ and ‘Primal Golem’ trees, while Otherworldly Soul had ‘Soul of Inquiry’ and ‘Soul of Vengeance’ as its trees.

That last one gave her pause. She focused on it, and her vision zoomed in. The tree began with two skills, which led into others, as one might expect. But she couldn’t see what the skills beyond the ones which were unlocked might be. “That’s not fair. How am I supposed to plan this out if you won’t show me the whole tree?”

Silence. The first skill that she could see was called Awakened Eye. It appeared to provide a static bonus to her Perception stat. The second was more interesting: Soul Marking. It apparently allowed her to mark a soul...somehow...and that soul could never disguise itself from her, and she would always know it was near. The actual range of the mark, and how many souls she could mark, seemed to operate on a scaled formula with her Soul and Perception stats. Right now, she could mark one, and range was listed as short.

Cecilia made a quick check; she had two skill points to spend, and each of these cost 1. If she bought both, she suspected the Perception boost would allow her to mark two souls, at least. Maybe even increase the range.

But why? Honestly, it felt more like a skill that creepy old man might use to keep track of his creations. She focused her attention on the Soul of Inquiry tree, instead. The two base skills here were Mind For Magic, which gave a passive boost to Intellect, and Analysis. Analysis seemed useful: it allowed her to identify...things, with more information being revealed based on her Soul and Intellect stats. It was dreadfully unspecific about what sort of things, though. Like the other two skills, they cost one point each.

“There’s definitely a pattern here,” she noted, wryly. The passive skill name was intriguing, though; it suggested that if she wanted to use whatever ‘magic’ meant in this world, the Intellect stat would be important. And as someone who had no idea where the fuck she was, being able to identify objects might at least keep her from looking like a complete idiot if she met other people.

Still, she moved onto the next tree; there was no point deciding until she’d seen all of her options. Elemental Golem continued the pattern of two base skills, letting her choose between Hands of the Forge, and Feet of the Zephyr. Neither of them boosted a stat; instead, the first let her resist high levels of heat, and manifest flames around her hands - or an object held in her hands - without causing herself or the object harm. The skill noted that damage done with this skill active would have the Fire attribute. The second allowed her to reduce her body’s weight and conjure a breeze to help push her higher and farther when running or leaping.

Neither of those sounded as immediately useful as Soul of Inquiry...but they did sound fun. She looked at the last available tree. Primal Golem’s base skills were Self-Repair and Golem Endurance. Both were passives, and Self-Repair did exactly what it claimed - introduced a regeneration effect that would repair her body over time, with the rate based on her Endurance. The rate was currently listed as low, but from a survival standpoint, no automatic healing was to be turned down. Golem Endurance outright eliminated the need to eat, drink, or sleep, and also eliminated fatigue from activities.

“That seems way too powerful. There’s gotta be a downside,” she said, and stared harder at the skill. No hidden print emerged. “I guess...that’s sort of what a golem is, though, when you get down to it. Work all day and all night without having to stop.” When she put it that way, it sounded creepy. Her bosses back home would slap that skill on her without a second thought, which made her not want to take it at all.

Cecilia chose Self-Repair after some thought; right now, the healing factor was exactly what she needed. It seemed all she had to do was solidify her intention, and the skill lit up in her vision, turning green. More, she immediately felt better; she looked down at her thigh; the cracks already looked smaller. Nice. Her focus returned to the skill tree and Self-Repair. Green lines illuminated two skills above it as well: Morph Limb, and A Doll’s Disguise. Curiously, these were also only one skill point; she wondered if everything was only one point, and if that meant that she’d only ever get two points per level. Or less. Morph Limb let her change the shape and material of her limbs, while A Doll’s Disguise--

“Hell yes,” she breathed as she read the description. A Doll’s Disguise allowed her to make cosmetic changes to her entire body, changing gender, height, weight, manifesting hair, and even mimicking specific people if she knew them well enough. She could be herself again.

It lit up green. Was it the most optimum choice? No. But as soon as the point was spent, Cecilia invoked it, bringing her own face and body to mind. She felt the change; her own dark hair sprang from her scalp and tumbled down her shoulders to just the length she liked best. Her body filled out, developing the proportions and curves that felt right to her. The stony color of her skin became warm and human once more.

A shudder of profound relief ran through her. She looked down at her thigh, where her skin had cracked. It was a dark bruise the size of both her hands put together, but it was a very human-looking injury. She poked it.

Felt cracked stone beneath her fingers, and the slightest rivulet of green fluid seeped out, as if rising from her skin, and evaporated. “Damn.” It was only a disguise. Just a remarkably complete one. She glanced back at the display for what skills she’d unlocked.

Only one, this time: Fluid Attributes. Her eyebrows - now that she had them again - went up. It allowed her to pull points out of one physical attribute, and drop them into another physical attribute, although it could only be done once a day, and the attributes would rebalance themselves after twelve hours.

Even so, there was no arguing with the usefulness of that , particularly in conjunction with skills like Self-Repair, that would become more effective with higher levels of Endurance. And still only one point to activate.

Cecilia glanced back at Analysis. “We’re coming back for you, buddy, I promise. But for now, let’s look at that Technique I can choose, then we’ll spend those stat points.”

Techniques flickered to life before her eyes. These weren’t grouped in categories, or locked behind skill trees, but there were only three to choose from; a curious thought provoked another infodump: only Techniques she qualified for were shown, based on stats, class, skills, and level. Right now, she only had Triple Strike, Flashstep, and Arcane Bolt to choose from. The first was a melee attack, allowing her to drain her spiritual energy to attack three times with supernatural speed. At her current pool, she could use it three times before she would deplete herself. Flashstep allowed her to instantly travel about five feet in a straight line, provided she could see where she would be ending up. It cost slightly less, allowing five uses before depletion.

Arcane Bolt was a channeled burst of spiritual energy, small but with long range, and the Magic attribute for damage. It was also cheap; she could use it ten times before needing to recharge. They were all tempting, and it wasn’t hard to see how they might synergize with various skills in the future. Cecilia suspected that the baseline stat of a regular human being was five; if so, that made her about twice as strong as a regular human. Triple Strike, coming from her, would be a lot more dangerous than the Arcane Bolt.

But Flashstep, if it had been an option back home, would have saved her life. That alone made it sorely tempting.

The sun was now overhead, and Cecilia’s stomach growled, prompting regrets about not taking Golem Endurance. “Fine,” she muttered. She chose Triple Strike, and then quickly divided out her stat points: two into Might, two into Endurance, and two into Intellect, thinking ahead towards Analysis.

She rose to her feet, the mud making a grotesque sucking sound as it pulled at her limbs. “Ugh. Okay. Next task: find some clothes, and some people.”