Did landing on someone with a spaceship that fell from orbit after it was teleported into an alternate universe via wormhole count as murder? Such things surely would not hold up in any sane legislation, but, luckily for me, this was a game—so worst-case scenario I would yell “objection” really loudly and implicate this freshly made engine stain’s pet parrot.

  I wondered if that would buff out.

  Looking at the rest of the wreckage that was probably the least of my problems but one that I couldn’t help but sadistically think about, nonetheless.

  I crouched down to look at the victim of my alleged vehicular manslaughter. Unfortunately, they were not wearing silver or ruby slippers which was incredibly disappointing.

  Hopefully my log out button wasn’t clicking magic slippers together three times while saying “There’s no place like home.”

  I couldn’t even see their feet because well—spaceship—so even if there were fancy magic shoes down there, I had no way to get to them unless I dimension magicked away the ship which, although I hadn’t tried, seemed unlikely.

  The former person’s head and arms were protruding from the underside of my spaceship. They were humanoid with blue skin, pointed ears, completely bald and had two large tusk like teeth coming out of their mouth and pointing upwards along the side of their face. Their pale-yellow eyes stared lifelessly up towards the sky, their mouth slightly agape. They wore a cloak of deep purple with burst of pinker colors that flashed and roamed the fabric.

  I concluded it must be magic, or very high tech. I could probably have made something shimmer like that with my dad’s power tools and the right materials, so it wasn’t entirely out of the question. But I’ll go with magic until proven otherwise considering it existed.

  The, uh, pronoun indeterminate creature’s rather muscular arms were splayed out like someone basking in the sun or exhausted after a run. If said creature had a few more centimeters of upper body not obliterated by what was basically an improvised and poorly executed rod from god; I would have been able to at least determine the sex of my vic—ahem. Alleged victim. But alas, their muscular arms and thick neck were not enough to accurately determine such a thing. If I had to guess height off of their arm span, I would say they stood at a height of around a meter and a half?

  As I drew closer something else caught my eye. Behind the creature just out of reach of its left hand, there was a horn. An ornately carved animal horn that was obviously also an instrument. I walked over and picked it up to examine it closer.

  It was hollow, a pristine white, and curled like that of some sort of sheep as one moved from the small blow hole tip to the large, vocal exit. The sides held carvings of brown, orange, blue, and purple. The hundreds of tiny patterns looked like constellations of stars in some foreign sky.

  Potentially this foreign sky.

  Depictions of animals I’d never seen, and people I couldn’t name fought, thought, loved, cried, and trained in tiny corners of the instrument. The horn felt like it held the stories of thousands and seemed too incredible of an art piece to just simply be laying here in the rubble.

  A hunter held his longbow fully drawn with an arrow aimed straight at a large three-armed crab with the tail of a scorpion. A griffin looking beast with serpentine tails clawed at a bear with large moose antlers. A pair of humanoids held each other as they sat staring down at a small child who lay resting. A person with a sword almost the same size as they were protected a young woman whose head cradled against their neck from a giant whose blade left scars on the world around him. A woman with long braids held a hammer over an anvil as she forged a sword of many colors across it.

  There were more. Oh, so many more. I could have stared at this horn for the rest of the day just burning their stories into the retina of my eyes, but I had other things I wanted to explore right now. I placed it gently into my backpack as something I would examine more closely once night fell. If the stories had any relation to the sky overhead—night would be the time to really examine the art piece.

  I looked back over towards the previous tenant of this plot of land and decided I would try to get the cloak off of them. It looked cool and that was all the reason I needed to give it a shot even if it was futile considering it was kind of pinned beneath the ship.

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  I reached down and yanked on the cloak.

  Surprisingly, it almost immediately slipped out from underneath the corpse and the ship as if nothing held it down. I stumbled backwards having pulled pretty hard to try and dislodge it only to find myself met with little to no resistance. I held the article out in front of me to get a good look at it and decided it did, in fact, look quite cool.

  The dancing pink splashes really made it seem mysterious and magical and the deep purple color was totally me. The complete lack of blood on the item was an amazing bonus since I was completely prepared to have to go find somewhere to wash it before I wore it. I threw it around myself and felt a tingly sensation pass through my body as the clothing landed on my shoulders.

  It felt—right?

  I held my hands out and looked at my arms. I felt an energy radiating from my new equipment that made me feel at ease. Calm. Home.

  I felt myself choke up a little at that and reached back and pulled the cloak around me, completely enveloping myself in it. Huddled in my new favorite “totally not an emotional support blanket,” I looked around a bit more before deciding there wasn’t anything left for me down in this crater. I made my way back up the side but slipped a little on the uneven ground. I reached out my hands to stop myself from falling, but instead of catching myself I found my face hitting hard dirt.

  Which was definitely odd because my arms were currently fully outstretched.

  And yet I was lying face down on the ground.

  Witchcraft.

  I pulled my arms back and felt no discernable difference. I reached over to the seam of the cloak and pulled it apart, then pushed myself to my feet. Weird, nice, probably magical, cloak was weird, nice, and probably magical. I should have known.

  I reached the top of the crater and turned around. I remembered my next course of action was to explore the path over on the other side of the spacecraft that led into the forest, but first I needed to explore my new loot. I threw my hands to either side, attempting to push the sides of the cloak away, but found my hands and arms never met any resistance.

  Well, they met a little resistance, but not what you would expect from a solid object. More like putting your hands into a pool of slightly less dense than water liquid. I pulled my hands back and looked at them. They seemed normal. Just like the last time. My hands were going somewhere else. Maybe an inventory system? It seemed really convoluted for an inventory. It’d be much easier to just have it part of the augmented reality, but oh well.

  I picked up a small rock and then tried putting my hands into the cloak again. They did the same thing as last time. So, I released the rock from my grip and retracted my hands, finding that the rock stayed inside my cloak.

  I once again reached inside the garment and found the rock exactly where I released it, and upon pulling it out found no abnormalities with it. With this revelation, I did the next logical thing. I flailed my arms around inside the cloak looking to see if the previous owner had bequeathed any additional goodies to me in their generous donation.

  Despite flailing my arms to the best of my abilities I really didn’t find a whole lot. There were a few unidentified liquid vials, likely potions of some sort and some shiny rocks. Every time I put my arms into the cloak, I felt an energy pass over me that felt incredibly familiar—but, I didn’t know why.

  “It’s so strange.” I said with childlike wonder as I gently moved my hands back and forth inside the cloak like a kid playing with water. As I stood there mesmerized, I had a thought. Could it be that this cloak used dimension magic? It seemed like it fit the criteria, right? How else would you describe being able to reach inside a cloak and pull out items that had no business being within such a thin layer of cloth?

  I closed my eyes and embraced the feeling that felt like a whisper on my skin. I tried to latch on to the feeling, guide it, change it. The item seemed to react to my probing, and I felt the water I had submerged my arms in begin to change its flow slightly, like a current redirected by a dam.

  A smile spread across my lips as I felt I’d just successfully used magic for the first time. I checked my mana to see if it had changed at all, but I just saw the same “green” indicator that I’d had when I first realized I had such an interface. Maybe I just used too little for the indicator to change. Something ran across my hand in the depths of the dimensional current and I instinctively jerked my hand back.

  I slowly reached back towards where something had brushed my hand but didn’t feel anything there anymore. I concentrated, immersing myself in the feelings of the flow. I felt there was something still in the cloak that I hadn’t taken out yet, but that it was too far away for me to grab. I changed the current again, bringing it closer to my hand until I was able to snatch it and pull it free with a triumphant “Woot!”

  I now held in my hand a knife.

  A scary looking knife that I thankfully didn’t cut myself on when I grabbed it. It was curved and jagged with a black blade and blood red carvings along the edge and handle like something you’d see the evil cultist use for a blood sacrifice.

  I looked down at the bald blue upper half of a person at the bottom of the crater, then at the dagger in my hand and the mysterious cloak around my person. Then at the two hooded figures that had just exited the tree line on the other side of the crater and were making their way towards me at an alarming speed.

  Oh.