I cautiously peered around a fence post at a group of advancing men. One, two, three, all of them bearing pitchforks, buckets, and tether rope. White-linen tops with baggy, almost burlap-quality trousers.
As their tooling and rough clothing suggested, the three men were a shift of laymen obligated to the pastoral community on which this town operated. Around me was the continuation of the fence post I was hiding behind, which they seemed to be headed towards.
The fence enclosed a herd of strange bovine hybrids. Scaly, whip-like tails affixed to plated rumps, the creatures lowered their muddy-brown, wooly heads to the ground to graze. It was hard to describe them as cute or primal, with how furry and squat the front was, and how that contrasted so horrendously with the reptilian backside. I did expect there to be some kind of husbandry in this world, but I never imagined the livestock to be so wildly off-putting.
After awhile though, I soon rationalized that there was, of course, no reason to consider them bizarre. All I need do was reflect upon my own circumstances to realize I was, in fact, the odd one here.
I'd gone as far west as I could, skirting the domestic core of the town. That, unfortunately, meant invading the cattle's territory was the only way I could continue without extending my trip to well past a day, or even two to circumnavigate their pastures.
For all my trouble, waddling in dung and risking a sharp hoof through the middle, I was awarded with the very thing I struggled to avoid. Oh, the irony.
The men sauntered over to the fence and heaved themselves over, oblivious to my presence. They continued out into the fields, ribbing each other with elbows and chortling their way along. I suppose this town must have some pretty lax rules for how irresponsibly they swung their tools around. Intelligence and the risk of injury were, sadly, inversely and grossly proportional.
That was a little too close for my liking. Things could have gone badly for me if they had just looked to their right just a little more, or were somewhat conscious of the neglected fence. Such a sad state, deplorable even. Dilapidated and limned in reddish lichen, it was well past its useful service life. I was nonplussed by the fact the cattle weren't taking advantage of its compromised state.
I let out a breathless sigh of relief, long after they jumped the fence and disappeared over a small hillock.
Once sure they were truly gone, I continued experimenting with [Rudimentary Shape Manipulation]. The name in itself was pretty self-explanatory. I could change my body into a number of rudimentary shapes. Some of the more basic geometric constructs were straightforward to make, like cubes, double-tetrahedrons -and their singular siblings, cylinders, and the venerable sphere, which was probably the more useful of the shapes. Vast improvements were made to my downhill movement, courtesy of the wonders of its curves. I was just rollin' along.
There were, as with everything rudimentary in nature, limits to what it could do. For one, despite my body's transition into these shapes, there was an unavoidable lack of rigidity. My body simply couldn't harden into the shape. I wasn't overly concerned by this since the application just wasn't there for it to be a issue. In fact, it made riding around as a ball over rough terrain a little easier.
Another caveat was the absolute complexity limit. Stellated solids and polyhedra faceted beyond that of a cube were off-limits to [Rudimentary Shape Manipulation]'s power. Understandable, considering I couldn't hold one of those shapes for any amount of time anyway given how soft I was, and the fact that they were entirely unrecognizable from that softness. Once again, that wasn't as much of a let-down as it implied, since there really wasn't any use for inane and, quite honestly, obscure geometries.
The last one I discovered while working on the real breadwinner of the skill. Mass limitations. I couldn't make myself bigger, or smaller than what my biological mass could support. It had a hand in determining how far I could reach with my arms.
Yes, arms. Admittedly, it was a stretch to call them arms, but they serve the same purpose.
Transformations weren't strictly an all-encompassing change to my body. A relief, since it allowed me to direct my body mass to confined areas, and grow whatever construct I wanted there. This fact gave me enough morphological latitude to form thin cylinders around my body.
My arms had neither the strength or mass to lift objects heavier than myself. Emphasis on 'myself'. There was nothing stopping me from lifting my own body.
Twirling one of those many tendrils around in the air like a rodeo lasso, I launched it up toward the fence panels above me. It coiled around and, with a little help of some tetrahedral barbs I lined along its length, had just enough frictive force to latch onto the soft wooden planks.
I did the same with a number of them, and was soon whipping myself back and forth along the fence, testing the elasticity of the round tentacles and their overall performance.
Supple, and elastic. I was beginning feel out some of the characteristics of my body. Even if I couldn't see myself for the aberrative lensing around me, teasing out the nuances and limitations of my body proved more than feasible, and a joy to carry out. Unsure though, whether those qualities were a consequence of [Rudimentary Shape Manipulation], or my body's own constitution. I had a feeling it was the former; my body's consistency felt a bit more pulpy at first.
Toying with my new appendages like this brought me to a sudden epiphany. All my skills have a central theme. They were [Rudimentary]. Simple, plain, basic, primordial in a way. If I recall, the voice said something about overcoming my limitations, or along those lines. Apparently, I was something of an anomaly. I wasn't something that was supposed to have gotten to this point.
With the [Rudimentary] series of skills that I have, that made sense. I could barely move at first. Overcoming those limitations, for something without my influence, might have been impossible. I was the first of my kind to get this far. Who knows how many more of me were in that tower. Whether by some evolutionary fluke, or mere coincidence, my consciousness settled into this little blob after I died.
I awed myself with the thought. It was humbling, in a way, just how fortunate I was. Not to have just survived for this long, but to live again at all. Inconvenient as it was at times and tortuous without a the better part of my childhood, it was still a life.
"Thank you. Wherever you are out there, benefactors. Thank you."
If there were gods, guardian angels, or specters watching over me, there was a chance they heard that little thought.
Setting aside my religious tendencies, there was another implication to the [Rudimentary] series of skills. If there were basic skills, could there be more advanced versions? The idea was rather exciting. It looked like things could quickly tend toward combinatorial explosion with enough time. Maybe my [Rudimentary] skills could improve too. I'd certainly enjoy an upgrade to [Basic Locomotion], which was part of the reason why I made my arms.
An interesting question came up while I experimented. What came after arms, but legs? That was my thought process for improving [Basic Locomotion], but it ultimately ended in failure. Unlike my tendrils, legs required many, many components in order to function properly. A pendular swing, multi-jointed skeletal structure, and immense control over a variety of various gyroscopic and proprioceptive inputs. Excluding maybe the third part, I didn't have any of these. I suppose I had to content myself with arms for now.
And content I was. It probably wouldn't have been a good idea to be standing right now anyway. Someone was near.
I ducked back behind one of the spongy fence posts, and peeked an arm out to see around it -a little trick I discovered not long after forming them.
It was a girl.
She looked very young, probably not older than five or six, and... absolutely adorable! A short, light-brown bob cut danced about her round face, and beady little cerulean eyes practically glowed as she took in the air, the sky, and fields beyond the fence, white smocks fluttering about.
As I slowly reeled back from fawning over her, I started a bit when her eyes locked onto me through the fence post.
Huh? That was... impossible, wasn't it? Only one of my thin tendrils were poking out. Could she have seen it?
She looked as startled as I was, and immediately halted to cock her head in confusion at me. It was clear she was unsure what she was looking at.