I needed to figure this out.

  Sitting on the large rock by the lake, I turned the makeshift recorder over in my hands. The crude instrument wasn’t perfect, but I felt like it was checking the required box with my skill for “instrument”. I had felt something when I played it earlier, something just beyond the edge of my perception. A vibration, a resonance.

  There was something there. I just had to find it.

  I brought the reed flute to my lips and blew a soft note, letting the sound drift over the water. The lake remained still, the fish below undisturbed. I tried again, adjusting my fingers, testing different positions. The notes wavered, some coming out clearer than others, but none of them had the strange effect that had influenced the fish before.

  I felt like I wanted to understand why.

  My thoughts turned to the idea of mediums. Sound traveled through air, but it also traveled through water – though differently. I remember watching an old nature video talk about dolphins and how their echolocation was more effective than that of bats. Something about sound traveling faster in water than in air, with dolphins' echolocation having a much bigger range relative to size.

  So that had to be why the effect worked on the fish earlier. Water carried vibrations from the music better than air. There was a good chance that my dizzy-fish song was working, I just needed to give it more power or be closer – god forbid. But if that was true, then maybe it wasn’t just water I could send the music through. Maybe I could find some other medium to carry the magic mojo wave frequency.

  I glanced down at the rock beneath me. On a lark, I pressed my palm flat against the stone, took a deep breath, and played another note.

  A low hum vibrated through my hand.

  My eyes widened.

  The sound had carried through the stone, almost like an echo, but something lighter. I pressed my hand down harder, willing myself to feel the sound. It was faint, but I could sense something.

  Feeling the echo, I realized that the rock was big, much bigger than I’d realized. This rock felt like it extended far beneath the ground, past where the grass and dirt at ground level. This was surprising that I could sense this much of the shape of the object from the vibration, I roughly knew the boulder was over the size of a large house.

  I inhaled and played another note, this time holding it longer. The hum deepened, a sensation rippling outward from where my hand touched the stone. It was like pressing against a drumhead and feeling the vibrations dance beneath my fingertips. The ground beneath me seemed to shift – not actually moving, but in presence.

  This rock wasn’t just a rock. It was part of something more, more of the world.

  I stopped just making random notes and started playing “Hot Cross Buns”, the first thing they teach kids to play on a recorder. As I played, I pushed harder, playing another note, then another, pouring my focus into the resonance. My skin tingled, my bones vibrated faintly, as if I was becoming part of the frequency itself. I felt like there was something pouring out of me, a growing emptiness that increased as I felt myself connect with the rock underneath me. The feeling spread, filling my chest, my arms, my legs—

  A sudden wave of dizziness hit me.

  I gasped, breaking the sound. The world lurched, the vibrations cutting off in an instant. My head swam as I caught myself, hands braced against the stone.

  What the hell was that?

  I sat there, panting, trying to steady myself. Whatever I had just done, it had pushed something further than before.

  I felt empty, like I had just sprinted a mile. Only I didn’t feel it in my body, but in my soul.

  A thrill ran through me.

  Did I use something up to fuel the music? Was this mana or something like it?

  It would make sense, in movies or games I had played there was always some type of magic juice. While this world seemed to have rules of its own, it still seemed to have a majority of physics consistent with what I knew. And whether it was gasoline or calories, you had to spend energy to make stuff happen.

  I was onto something.

  I took a deep breath, steadying myself. This ability—this "Musical Resonant Frequency"—was more than just playing music. It was a connection. To sound, to the environment, to the things around me in a way I had never experienced before.

  Still feeling tired, I leaned back on the rock to rest and think.

  As I watched the clouds go overhead I felt my mind drifting over the new skills and my interest in music.

  Its interesting, I really have never been musically inclined. The recorder is the totality of my musical ability; I never had the interest or had been forced to learn to play anything else.

  I wasn’t even that big of a fan of music, truth be told. Whenever friends invited me out to concerts, I always found a convenient excuse not to go. I had playlists and streamed music on my phone like most of the population, but I mainly only had it for something to listen to while driving or to relax while hiking. My music tastes have also been called by friends as basically non-existent, with most of my most-played songs being stuff that only has graced the top 10 lists of the last 30 years.

  I wasn’t opposed to learning to play music or an instrument. Just never had anything that resembled enough interest to get that drive to learn, if I remember correctly it takes hundreds, if not thousands of hours of practice to learn to play just about anything. If I’m being fair with what I’m feeling, it's not the interest in the music but the mechanics of this world. I don’t think that’s what drives the typical person to learn to play a guitar until they have blisters on their fingers.

  Maybe I’m overthinking it. I’m probably just being overly critical for the reasons people do things, realistically people probably learn to play music just because they think its cool and to try to get laid.

  With that thought, I found myself thinking of Courtney and her little outburst at the airport before I got teleported to this world.

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

  I wonder if she looked for me? When I didn’t board the plane did she think I just grabbed another flight to avoid awkwardness?

  Its been about a day since I came here, it was probably noticed that I was missing at this point. I will usually text my mother and my step-dad when I get back to my apartment on big trips like this. As I don’t have a romantic partner or even roommates no one would really be able to check my whereabouts. If I had to guess, it was probably noticed that I was missing but nothing was figured out.

  Luckily, I didn’t have any pets waiting for me at home. I think if I had a dog or cat just waiting for me, starving that it would tear me up inside.

  It's interesting, I really would have thought that I would have been thinking about family and loved ones at this point. I typically am more thoughtful about the people around me and how I effect them.

  Maybe this is a stress response? I have been feeling very fight-or-flighty for the last 24 hours.

  Could…this world be affecting my thoughts? I have been feeling surprisingly focused since coming here.

  My status said that my wisdom number had increased, going from 10 to 11. What would another point mean in a stat? Did I just have 10% more wisdom than before? And in this context, would this mean that I had made the subconscious judgment choice to not think of loved ones and focus on the ongoing emergency? Would I really be able to tell if my mind was being lightly affected?

  Oh here's a dark thought: my wisdom number had gone up 1 point, but my charisma point had gone up 3 points.

  What is charisma? Its not something that can be drilled down in a way that is quantifiable. With something like strength where you can measure it with how much weight you can lift, you really can’t measure charisma by just seeing how many people in a room like you.

  The dark thought is that people who are called charismatic are also considered selfish jerks. I would think that would be the result of not having to work for people to like you, but what if this world increased how selfish you are with the increased score?

  I shook my head. I didn’t feel more selfish, plus there was no growing desire in me to self-tan and scam people for drinks.

  I was just freaking out and overthinking. I needed to focus on the now.

  I leaned up from my included spot on the rock and stretched out. Checking my phone, which was still working (though getting low on power and still no signal), it had been about an hour since I took a break.

  Looking internally, I focused to see what happened to the emptiness. It was mostly gone, I felt fuller with only barely only a bit of the emptiness feeling remaining.

  I think my magic juice had refueled.

  It seemed to have done it naturally on its own. I didn’t have to eat or meditate or anything like that. I take something that could have been called a “short rest”, though I did not feel like that had refreshed me any more than you would normally expect for taking an hour for yourself.

  I picked up my recorder again, deciding to give it another go

  I sat back on the big sun-warmed rock, shifted my legs under me, and took a breath. The lake shimmered peacefully behind me, the occasional bird chirped from the trees, and the light breeze smelled faintly of moss and sun-warmed dirt.

  I started slow, playing the same basic tune.

  I think I had pushed too hard last time, and while I didn’t totally regret the rock-shaking experiment, I’d rather not pass out again from musical overexertion. This time, I focused on control. Instead of blasting sound into the stone like a magic-powered jackhammer, I played slower, more deliberate notes. I tried to feel the vibration in my fingertips and my bones rather than forcing anything.

  It helped.

  After a few minutes, I noticed the vibrations becoming easier to sense. Like my skin had tuned itself to a new frequency. Encouraged, I took it a step further.

  I pulled off my shirt, letting it fall to the side. The warmth of the stone radiated into my back as I pressed my bare palms and forearms flat against it. More skin contact meant more feedback, right? After a second thought, my pants followed my shirt into the pile on the side of the rock.

  I blew another note, feeling something else click into place

  It was subtle at first, a faint thrum that I could feel through my arms and chest. The sensation wasn’t painful, just… present. Like a deep bass line playing just beneath the surface of my skin. I moved my fingers slightly, shifting the pitch, and the vibrations changed.

  I could feel the shape of the rock again, like last time, but more clearly now. I could feel how massive and deep it was, like the tip of a buried mountain. The further I pushed sound into it, the more of it I could sense. It wasn’t just in the ground, it was the ground, part of the underlying bedrock itself.

  That realization hit me hard. I wasn’t just making music, I was sensing and responding how things responded to the music I made. Reading it like braille with my entire body.

  I leaned forward, pressed my chest against the stone, and played again.

  The vibrations spread faster this time. Stronger. I could feel them bounce and echo within the massive stone, pulsing back in response. Like the world itself was answering my song.

  My heart pounded. This was working. Really working. I pressed harder into the rock and blew a stronger note.

  A thought suddenly came to mind of an old podcast I listened to while hiking that was about Nikola Tesla. Besides being an ingenious inventor, Tesla was known to have made crazy claims like being able to create machines that could create a death-ray, photograph thoughts, or tear down bridges.

  For the bridge machine, it was supposed to be a small device that just vibrated at the correct frequency, which would just shake the bridge apart. Apparently, it was based on the fact that all objects have a sort of natural residence frequency that if an object is vibrated at will cause it to fall apart; it is the reason that high singing is supposed to break wine glasses.

  If that’s the case, maybe I should stop—

  CRACK.

  The rock split. Loudly.

  A jagged fissure ran through the center of the boulder with a sharp, thunderous snap. Dust and tiny pebbles sprayed into the air. I flinched and fell back hard onto the ground, catching myself on my elbows. My ears were ringing with how loud that had been with me right next to it. I could even hear a slight echo of the crack ringing through the valley.

  “What the—”

  Before I could even process what just happened, I saw it.

  A faint glow at the center of my vision. Not light exactly, but a shimmer. Like heat waves off asphalt. I blinked. It didn’t go away.

  “Okay…” I muttered. “That’s new.”

  I focused on it.

  With a soft ping, a glowing blue notification box appeared.

  The box hovered there for a second before blinking out.

  “Huh,” I said aloud. I must have practiced enough to improve my ability! This is promising, the first concrete sign of progress in the system!

  Then something bit my hand.

  I yelped and jerked away instinctively, flinging whatever it was into the grass beside the rock. I scrambled back, heart racing.

  It was a squirrel.

  A normal-looking squirrel—except for the fact that it had just tried to bite me while I was in the glade. That wasn’t supposed to happen. They only attacked when I left the safety of the valley. Right?

  I looked up, then around.

  I froze.

  The woods weren’t quiet anymore. The trees swayed, but it wasn’t the wind. It was movement. Hundreds—no, thousands—of small shapes were pushing out from the forest in waves. Squirrels, rabbits, raccoon-like things, several deer, all of them moving fast and all headed toward me.

  My eyes went wide.

  I had been so focused on the rock and its resonance, on pushing deeper and deeper into the rock, I hadn’t even thought of any noise I might make. With me pouring magic juice into making the rock vibrate, any sound that was made from that would have attracted any creatures that heard it.

  I hadn’t just split the rock.

  I had rung the goddamn dinner bell.

  My eyes flicked to the treeline surrounding the entire valley as more shapes poured out. The animals didn’t even look real anymore. All of them were focused directly on me.

  I looked at the cracked rock, at my flute in my hand, at the glowing embers of the fire still burning nearby.

  Then I looked back at the encroaching horde.

  “Well, shit,” I said.

  And I ran.