Observing the End, Volume 3: Protagonism

Chapter 11: Silvia

I’ve always wanted to ride a horse… Now I never wanna do it again. I thought that cars, vans and busses were bad. Nope, as far as motion sickness goes, horses are way worse. Of course, the main reason I got sick in vehicles was because of the toxic fumes and the horrible stench, but motion did play a part as well.

Anyway, my ball started glowing the other day. That stupid bouncy ball thing that Inari gave me a while back. I thought it was gonna explode, so I threw it as far as I could and tried to protect Talia with my body. Except it didn’t explode. A motherfucking unicorn popped out of it.

Obviously my first instinct was to try and keep it from goring us to death, but Talia convinced me to ride the b***h. Yes, it’s a female. Not that it really matters. I’m not sure if males or female horses are faster. I feel like I should know this kinda stuff, but it’s been years since I wrote about horses.

Whatever, the point is that we rode the magical silver unicorn mare for like an hour, before I couldn’t take it anymore. Of course, even though I hated running on Earth, that was back when I was just a normal human. Now, things are much different. On this planet and with my current strength, running is more like a series of giant leaps.

The higher I go, the slower it’ll be, but Talia likes to ride on my shoulders and bounce around. Hell, soon enough, she’ll probably be able to jump as high as I can. I don’t expect her to be as tall as her mother, but at the very least, she’ll be a lot bigger than me. Hopefully she’ll inherit my strength though… Her mother was way too weak to survive what we’re gonna be put through.

***

I kinda got off track earlier. What I forgot to say was that we left the mountains and came across another prairie. Not sure if it’s North, West, East or South, or even if this planet has poles in the first place! All I know is that I was gonna head towards where the sun rises from, but the unicorn is leading the way now.

She keeps going umm, well, I have no clue. It’s all grassy brown flat-ish-lands in every direction lately. Sometimes the grass is too high for us to see over and other times, it ain’t even grass. The mare will occasionally sniff some random plants, then start eating them casually. As if it ain’t even slightly worried about getting poisoned.

Usually Silvia, as Talia calls her, spends most of her time searching for food or water. I figured that Inari would have sent her here for some greater purpose, but nope. Just a glorified dowsing rod. To be honest though, both of us would’ve starved to death a few days ago if it wasn’t for Silvia.

We ate some green corn, yellow cabbage, giant cockroach meat, a bull that the unicorn mercilessly gored to death… Yeah, she definitely ain’t an herbivore. Whenever she sees a new animal, her first instinct is to kill and eat it. Sharing some of the meat with us. Even if it’s just a tiny sparrow-looking bird flying by, she’ll jump twenty feet in the air and try to chomp down on it.

Compared to my life with the tribes, this feels a lot more like an adventure. We don’t have any tents. We don’t bother with a campfire. We just f*****g kill or pick things and eat them raw. Then we drink out of rivers and streams, unafraid of catching horrible parasites or various diseases.

As far as sleeping goes… We all kinda huddle together for warmth and comfort at night. During the day though, Silvia lays on her side or stomach and uses my chest as a pillow for her head. While Talia usually lays on top of the unicorn’s chest.

We usually go to sleep in the day or night, and wake up in the evening or morning. Since the days are so short, one usually runs on into the next before you even notice. Fortunately though, we all have really strong senses of danger and awareness.

This one time a pack of jackals, or some kind of wild dog with brown fur and white spots, decided to try and sneak up on us. Talia was the first to wake up and shout “Daddy! Bad doggies are here!”

Then I tried to get up, but almost got impaled by a certain knife-like horn. Afterwards I smacked Silvia on the face a bunch of times and yelled “Wake the f**k up! We’re under attack!”

In the end, she just neighed softly and kept sleeping. Yeah, one of the stupid doggos lunged at her ass and tried to bite it, but her tail whipped out. The poor bastard’s head was smashed open and brains splattered all over his friends. Then Talia started growing at them and they left. Dragging away their buddy’s carcass.

The moral of the story is that as long as no giant demonic dragons come swooping down, we should be fine. No clue where we’re headed though.

***

At a certain point, I started to notice the ecology changing. From brown prairies to green grasslands. The air smells pretty good, the sky is blue, no monsters flying around and causing Hellstorms. Everything is still really tall though.

There are these ostrich-like birds, which are the size of giraffes. They taste pretty damn good and their eggs are just as massive, so yeah, yummy omelets. How did I cook without fire? Well, the old fashioned way. I found a smooth black rock and left it out in the sun while we took a nap. By midday, it was hot enough to cook an egg on.

Aside from the occasional butchering of unlucky animals, I haven’t really killed anyone in a while. It’s making me feel on edge. Like there’s a huge battlefield looming over the horizon. I’m excited, but at the same time, I don’t want Talia to have to be forced to fight. She’s only a few months old for f**k’s sake. She ain’t old enough to deal with that kinda s**t. What if we end up in some peaceful city eventually? Will she be able to live a normal life there if she’s like me?

In other news, it feels like my balls are gonna explode. I’ve gone without m**********g or having s*x for what feels like a week and I don’t know how much longer I can take this. There’s a forest up ahead, so hopefully I’ll have the chance to get some ‘alone time’.

I would feel awkward jerking off with either my daughter or Silvia nearby… As for s*x, even if I wanted too f**k a horse, it’d be kinda dangerous. Besides, I can’t even ride her properly because of the size difference, so how do you think the s*x would feel?

Hmmm, I still can’t understand what Inari sent me to this planet to do. I mean, sure, I’m glad that I came here. Talia wouldn’t have even been born otherwise. Same thing with my other kids. Is it to teach me perspective? Some kinda test?

I’ll be pissed off if all of this is just an overly convoluted ‘mount quest’. Sure, back when I played “The Gates of Sidhe”, there were times when I went through excruciatingly long and complicated trials in order to earn mounts. Virtual mounts that were entirely cosmetic in nature. Some of which, I never even used once after the first day.

Oh wait… No, there’s something much more difficult than getting mounts. I wanna say gaining the ability to fly, but that’s also way too easy. The only thing I could think of is Dimensional Travel. On this planet, there’s a motherfucking spaceship. One that can survive in the Chaotic Void or… The Arcane Orb! How the hell could I forget about that s**t?!

It’s this stupid bouncy ball! It ain’t a ball at all! It’s a goddamn Extradimensional Storage Device! Well, that ain’t really surprising, since a whole unicorn popped out of it. Still, if it can store things in a separated dimension, then it means there’s probably some sort of mechanism to make it work.

What I can’t understand is how it got here? I don’t remember ever writing about what happened to the Arcane Orb after Michael stopped using it as a glorified magical rock, to bludgeon people to death with. I don’t think he threw it away though. He probably gave it to one of his kids. Ugh, it’s so hard to keep track of s**t I wrote like three or four years ago.

If this thing is the magical barrier that protected me when I was falling to Orcheim, then there should be a way to use it as a protective shield. If I had to guess, I’d say that Inari probably sealed away some awesome starship on this planet. And this Arcane Orb is the key to unlocking it or maybe powering it? It could also just be a wild goose chase designed to frustrate and confuse me.

Kaniel and Sariel always liked creating absurdly ridiculous tests, sometimes spanning entire universes. Arcana’s other name is Kaniel, while Sariel is obviously Inari Okami. In my stories they were kinda like arch-frienemies. They couldn’t fight each other directly, but would send their Avatars or ‘Heroes’ to destroy each other’s s**t every now and then.

Both of them also have their own clusterfuck of Eternal Deity subordinates. Though there aren’t too many. From there, it’s a massive pyramid scheme of the different levels of Deities. Eventually, with Worldly Deities at the bottom, those ‘weak’ assholes have Legendary Immortals who work for them. The lowest Novice Immortals have ‘Mortals’ who work for them.

Now, when I say Mortal, what I mean is people who have magical abilities to the extent that they can live practically forever, are crazy-strong, can probably fly by using telekinesis or whatever and well, they’re just super overpowered. Like that giant demonic serpentine dragon was probably a really high ranking Mortal.

I would classify myself as an Expert Mortal. Which is somewhere in the middle, between a normal person or Novice, and a Legendary OP douchebag. Silvia might be a Master, which is a step above me. Hmmm, but whatever, it’s not like it even matters.