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“What do I want?” I asked myself, “And why?”

I looked up to the waxing moon. At the very least, since I was up, I might as well refill my mana.

A nature spirit in the form of a leaf laughed at me.

She set herself down on a root.

She flitted off against the gentle breeze.

So, what DID I want to do? It wasn’t just these quests before me. Those tasks... okay, I had asked for tasks like these. Why?

What would these tasks reward that I wanted? Did I want the rewards, or something else?

It hadn’t just been a desire to look at a newly revealed feature of my System, was it?

.....

No, it was tied into the diplomatic mission, and to my desire to be stronger, or at least not as weak.

Why did the mission matter? That was Rakkal’s desire, not mine. Did I want to perform the tasks of others? Was I some sort of natural slave?

No, I was still a titanspawn, a creature of magic and might. That wasn’t it.

Was it that I was, in practice, still a child? I read the specifications of my Inherent Longevity again. It had better not be! I wasn’t spending twenty-eight thousand years doing this! Or... maybe I should?

No, that wasn’t it, either.

Okay, so what had motivated me? What made me different than other titanspawn? Fear?

Curiosity.

From before even my first meal, I’d desired to understand how things worked. I had a mind, and it was thirsty for knowledge. Or hungry.

Was I hungry? I could eat. I could also not eat. I waded into the river, but the fish avoided me, especially when I decided to give up air for a while and just swim.

Ugh. How long had it been since I last just swam? My skills were rusty, unrefined. I toggled evolutions to help me see underwater and in the dark. Even going on in the background, the changes seemed slow and sluggish.

Well, fine. I wasn’t going to speed up my transformation tonight, anyway.

Okay, so I kind of did want to explore the world, to find new things. So part of me wanted to be here, or elsewhere. Did I want to meet new people? I wasn’t exactly good at that.

Was that an effect of me and my desires, or just that survival had put off developing Charisma?

I certainly wasn’t Kismet, who looked at everyone as a potential friend. Nor was I like Madonna, seeing the world as filled with only enemies and those to use as tools. Actually, Madonna was more like me than humanity.

I angled right and upward, avoiding someone’s fishing trap.

It’s no surprise that I didn’t want to be part of humanity; they’d generally treated me like crap.

Thinking back on it, the goblins, regarded by the other races as pests, were the ones who had treated me the best. Maybe that was because I had pretended to be one of them?

Hrm. Given the option, I had taken to magic like... well, like water. There was something there, but not the true core of it.

I turned around; if I kept going downriver, I’d be... in the sea.

Where my brothers and sisters probably lived.

Was I an outcast from what should have been my own society? I remembered a day of gluttonous cannibalism, the day I fled. Yeah, no thanks on joining THAT society.

I wanted to live.

Okay, that was a start. Insane me had even purchased a near-unheard-of twelve ranks of Inherent Longevity. Was it wrong to think my insane self might have had a clearer vision of what I wanted? That long of a lifespan... I had a LOT of life ahead of me.

If I didn’t stupidly die in some combat I had no right to even be in.

Hrm, I thought, passing a group of birds sleeping on the river surface, I did have the biomass. I should probably try to whip up a healing potion.

I’d fail, but I should probably try anyway.

Ugh, I could WALK upstream faster than this. I picked the side of the river closer to camp, surprising some small rodent or other.

Oh, a beetle of a type I’d never seen before! I popped it into my mouth and swallowed.

Calcified shell, like a turtle, but on a smaller scale. I don’t know what I had expected.

Okay. So, long, long life. Exploring, learning. Evolving.

Only there just wasn’t enough biomass. Not in reality. Theoretically, I should just maximize my unlocks, live on anything I could forage, and grow big and strong, like a bear.

So why was I still living as a reptile? Well, the scales were nice. The scales were AWFULLY nice, absorbing six points of the three common physical damage types: blunt, pierce, and lacerate. A far cry from the days where I would injure myself on sharp rocks.

Actually, was I a reptile, with my four chambered heart and internal warming?

No, now I was getting caught up on my physical form. That could change, did change, if only in minor ways. COULD I still do a big change, like the Goblin Transformation?

A task for some other night.

So, learning, exploring, evolving, and growing stronger. Plus, a long lifespan. Eventually, I wanted it all. Right, so what do I want NOW?

I wanted off this horrid island, and away from its oppressive people. Good, that was a start.

Now – why? I didn’t particularly WANT this diplomatic and economic mission.

Oh.

I wanted it done. I wanted it over with. Not just abandoned. I wanted it done, accomplished, and set up for someone with actual diplomacy-type skills.

So I could go home.

What did I want there? It wasn’t like it was that much different than being enslaved in the great hall of the jarl. Except that it was.

Somehow, the idea of five more years of servitude was immensely different than a lifetime of such.

What was it about home? Wasn’t I an outsider there, as well?

Wouldn’t I be an outsider, no matter where I went? No matter what form I took?

I heard a rustling from across the river, and moved into the brush on my side to watch. It turned out to be a piglet rather than one of the jarl’s men, which left me feeling silly. But hadn’t there been a day when I wouldn’t have had the patience to hide?

Why WAS I hiding, even if wounded?

That turned out to be a larger bag of worms than I had counted on; much of the world, I had to admit, still scared me. Both civilization and nature were violent, and I was just... not as skilled as I should have been at it.

I mean, the first tool I used was a wood axe, but the one I most used was a shield. When unequipped, it wasn’t a weapon or a tool or even a shield, but armor that I most missed.

I squeezed the soggiest pieces of my gambeson, pressing water from it. It wouldn’t be as useful if it started molding and rotting away. I set about finding some sticks to set by the fire, to dry the gambeson while I slept.

Was Blackfur right? Did I think, perhaps, too defensively? I didn’t think so; how many times had I been set upon by multiple opponents? More often than single enemies, it seemed.

I looked up at a shooting star, a thin line of star-stuff, falling to earth.

It wasn’t as if I could THINK my enemies away; the immediate enemies on the island would need to be removed with violence.

Violence. Again. And me with less than full health meters. Again.

No, I know how THAT would end, even if I’d be close to half full tomorrow. If I slept. I should sleep. I yawned. I wanted to sleep.

Not the lucid dreaming, not tonight. A full, restorative night’s rest.

Because the jarl would need to die. I wanted off this island. Out of this island CHAIN.

I wanted to go home.

I didn’t care about triumphant; a normal success would do. But I refused to let this chain of islands, this mission, break me. I would succeed here, have some manner or measure of victory to show for it, and I would be stronger for having done this.

And if I had to kill people to get that done... Meh, there wasn’t enough blood-lust in me to get worked up about that. I’d kill who I had to kill, and the rest could just stay here.

I felt better when I returned to camp, if much more tired than my fatigue meter indicated. I may not have the specifics of what I wanted, but I had a direction, a bearing, a sense of destination.

Tomorrow, I could start figuring out how to get from here to there.

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