Adventures in Lunightia Singleplayer

One may wonder why a spirit asking Faith to dig a hole held any significance at all. After all, it was a single request amongst the many she received from them each day. Most went unfulfilled- if she attended to every last thing Chat asked of her, she’d never have any time for herself- but this request had brought to mind memories of her childhood, so much that she’d had one.

 

It had been a simpler time, then, and one when she’d had all the power of the universe singing through her each time she’d jumped through the worlds with her companion. The memory of him descended upon her with sudden clarity: He’d been a dragon, although different from her, with dark scales and bright eyes.

 

He had been her equal, her eternal companion, her second soul, for many ages. They had once been able to peer through each other’s eyes and communicate across any distance, no matter how great, but that had been a long time ago. At some point, something in the universe split and shifted, and they had found themselves unlinked.

 

It had been a freedom, at first. No nosey other snooping through her sight at his leisure, no distracting second vision to contend with, no distracting conversation pulling her away from her task time and again, before she could finish with it. But the next time she shifted worlds she hadn’t quite jumped, she’d been pulled. 

 

And for the first time in her short memory, she’d been powerless and utterly alone.

 

She’d searched for him, of course, but with the distraction of having to survive before living for the first time in her existence combined with the sinking feeling that even if she ever saw him again, they wouldn’t recognize each other, she’d given up sooner than she liked to admit.

 

And, over time, she’d forgotten him. She’d changed her name and made new friends, new memories. A dragon became a phoenix became nobody at all. She’d been alone a long time, now. The world she’d been in just before jumping here had been a complete outlier, and she’d dared to hope that she had found another companion at long, long last.

 

Evidently, she hadn’t.

 

But she remembered, now, that quarrying had been a favorite pastime when she was young. A game, a competition between herself and her companion. (She still couldn’t recall his name.) She rowed herself across the river, staked out a spot a little ways from the village, and began to dig.

 

---

 

The familiar task of mining out layer after layer of stone from the earth and the comforting weight of the pickaxe in her paws soon allowed her to shift her focus from mining to thinking. At least, it did for a short while. She was soon snapped out of her contemplative trance by the shrill sound of bat calls.

 

While most Players would ignore a bat in their mine, Faith’s attention snapped up to the small animal immediately. Her companion’s spirits took the form of bats. She wasn’t sure how she knew, or if she was even right- they’d parted long before spirits had begun to follow either of them- but she was seized with the certainty that bats were important.

 

…Even if not this bat, necessarily. But still, it deserved a name, at the very least. She had a feeling she’d be seeing a lot of it. She thought for a moment, but she had never been good at coming up with names. She turned to Chat.

 

“What’s its name?” She asked them, hoping that the narrow scope of the question would produce relatively fewer answers. She got a lot of confused looks, the sort that just screamed How do you expect us to know? But some of them seemed to catch on to her intent, and after a few moments she was rewarded with a resounding and nearly unanimous “Pancake” as her answer.

 

A bit unorthodox, but having so many Chatters agree on something was a rarity, so she was just going to take the name at face value and hope that she wasn’t breaking any cosmic rules. Based on Chat’s eerie synchronicity in their choice, though, she was probably at least poking at a force outside of her comprehension. Oh well. They’d be warning her if she would suffer any dire consequences. Probably.

 

The newly-dubbed Pancake didn’t seem to be malicious, at least, so even if it was something more than just a bat, she’d probably be fine. She held out a paw to it and it took the invitation to sit, then squeaked at her again.

Cute… One tri-colored spirit mumbled, floating up to peer at the bat. They swiped at one of its ears, but the bat flicked it out of the way before the spirit’s arm could pass through it. The spirit tried to swipe at its other ear, but it got the same result. Faith moved her paw closer to herself, shooting the spirit a chastising look.

 

Even if the bat couldn’t see the chatters, trying to pass through it was probably a little rude. A gray spirit shoved the tri-colored one out of the way and batted at Pancake’s face. That one got a real reaction- Pancake lunged forward, attempting to bite the spirit’s arm for its insolence.

 

Faith gaped down at Pancake as she waved her other arm to discourage more spirits from coming forward and teasing the little bat. It had clearly reacted to Chat’s curious prodding. It could see Chat. But it clearly wasn’t a Chatter or a Player, the only two entities capable of seeing spectator spirits as far as Faith was aware.

 

…Was it? Could spectator spirits be corporeal entities? Was this world inhabited by another Player who’d sent their spectators out to scout? She brought it up, closer to her face, to peer at it (although not too close- she didn’t want to get swiped if it turned out not to like that.) It just looked like a normal bat to her.

 

“Are you a spectator spirit?” Faith asked it, cautiously. Was that why Chat had been so certain of its name? They always seemed to know each other by name, even though Faith rarely heard introductions among the spirits. They just seemed to… know. She’d never questioned it until now.

 

It chattered at her unintelligibly. Right. Even if it was, she wouldn’t be able to understand what it was saying. That was a quirk of the spirits that had always confused and frustrated her to no end, and that was true now more than ever. She gave a frustrated sigh, and held her paw higher, so it could take off if it wanted to.

 

“Look, if you are, tell your Player that I’m not looking for any trouble, alright? I’m happy just to stay out here by the village if I need to.”

 

Pancake launched off of her outstretched paw as she finished speaking, but it didn’t fly off to some unknown location like she was expecting. It just fluttered up to the exposed mouth of a cave she’d dug past a few y-levels ago and settled down for a nap.

 

Maybe it was just a weird animal, or something destined to become a Player or a Spectator at some point. It wasn’t like Faith knew how any of that worked. She shrugged it off. If it was important, she’d find out when it became relevant. Until then, she had a hole to dig.