I get the feeling that time is passing somewhat strangely. Some moments it feels like my doppelganger has spent hours expounding on my flaws, while other times his arguments feel fresh and new, even if I have memories of him bringing them up before. It doesn’t matter what I say to him, nothing seems to convince him that I’ve learned my lesson or have overcome my flaws.

I have a sinking suspicion that it’s the flipside of earlier advantage. I’m too strange of an existence for the spirit to be able to take control of me if I were to lose, making my defeat impossible by technicality. But that same disconnect meant that I wasn’t able to trigger the spirit into conceding and leaving me alone either. I could talk back and forth with it as long as I liked, but as time went on I realized that the spirit didn’t truly understand the words it was throwing at me.

The magical telepathy that let it understand my oar based morse code told it what I was saying, but it also told the being what to say back, without the Spirit ever being involved in the process. It was simply a magically generated phrase aimed to do the most emotional harm. Discovering that fact was the tipping point I needed to start regaining my emotional composure. Meditation gave me the time and the mental distance I needed, and with the knowledge that none of this was personal I could slowly address the issues that were brought up

It wasn’t a miracle cure by any means, but having nothing but time on my hands to approach and examine my mental issues, coupled with an ability that let me maintain a mindset conducive to beneficial trains of thought and a spirit who couldn’t stop poking those issues beat the hell out of an hour a week with a therapist who worked for my parents as much as he did for me. I could have used someone else in that role of impartial observer to help me get my head on straight, but eventually I reached a point where I was desensitized to the barbs that my doppelganger refused to leave well enough alone.

While it was annoying that he wouldn’t stop talking, it was also a blessing in some ways that he wouldn’t stop talking. As long as the spirit was focused on talking to me it wasn’t trying any other approach, such as magical or physical attacks that might actually do something to me. Moreover, it meant that it was too busy to react as I began to move again, slowly starting to row my way backwards and forwards as I tried to figure out how exactly I could escape this foggy, silent world.

Navigation continued to insist that I was doing exactly what I needed to do to leave this place, and I wondered if I had some other method to get around whatever spell the spirit was using to lock navigation down. Rowing with Mana Infused oars propelled me forwards just the same as always, although the water rippled far more than it had for my regular strokes. Half an hour later I was still stuck in the fog, and my energy reserves were depleted as far as I was willing to push them.

Mentally, I kicked myself for getting the class skill that I did, even if I didn’t have any way of knowing what my class would give me, or if saving it till now would have given me something different. I kept coming back to the idea that it had given me Mana Infusion because I didn’t need anything else. And since mana infusion didn’t seem to be the Skill I needed to escape this place, that meant I had access to another way. Sure, it was optimistic thinking that relied on more hypotheticals than I was comfortable with, but the alternative was accepting that I was stuck in this place for a long time.

Probably not forever, because it turned out that consistently facing my deepest and most secret fears was an excellent way of gathering experience. This wasn’t exactly a new revelation; I just hadn’t thought it was a sustainable method before stumbling across this place. It was slowing down some, now that I had gotten somewhat used to the ordeal, but I was still constantly communicating and interacting with an enigmatic magical entity. In a week, give or take, I could boost myself to level eleven and see if another Skill would change anything, but I really didn’t want to wait around that long.

Of the skills I had available to me now, Water Resistance and Blessing of the Tides were the likely candidates for letting me fix my current problem. As much as I’d like to hit the fog entity with my oars a couple of times, its position inside of me meant that I couldn’t get the right angle to whack it upside the head. But considering it was literally made of condensed sea fog, I was hoping that Water resistance might apply and grant me the more esoteric defenses I needed to ignore the trapped nature of this place.

I wasn’t that simple. I could focus on Water Resistance easily enough, and it felt like I was twisting it slightly to do what I asked, judging solely by the dull mental pain I had picked up, but my unwanted passenger refused to dissipate or leave me alone. Whatever resistance I had wasn’t a complete immunity, by definition, and whatever it did simply wasn’t cutting it.

To be honest, I had no idea how Blessing of the Tides could help me. It was the one skill that refused qualification. I knew that it put me more in touch with my Spirit Attribute, giving me more mana to work with, but that wasn’t all the Skill did. It was a blessing, and that implied more than just an ongoing boost.

There was a connection there, even if it was one-sided and malnourished. I hadn’t been aware of it enough to acknowledge it, but Blessing of the Tides tied me and it together. I took on a small piece of the conceptual nature of the tide. Ebb and Flow were the most obvious takeaways from that, apparent in the way that my spiritual power ebbed and flowed with time, but now that my Skill was confirming these mental hunches for me I could dive deeper.

At first it seemed like the tide wasn’t present in my current location, given the completely still nature of the water, but that was just a localized illusion. The water might be still, but that simply meant that there were more forces acting on it than just tidal forces. Tides were caused by gravitation variations. On earth that was due to the moon steadily rotating around the planet, pulling water in its wake. It was likely something similar here, but even if the cause was different the mechanism was the same. Gravity wasn’t something that could be stopped so easily. Even if the waves were forcibly locked down here it didn’t remove the underlying pull of gravity. My mass of a couple hundred pounds was insignificant compared to the weight of the ocean, and it took eons of time for the tides to slowly impart energy to the sea, coaxing it slowly into habitual patters of rise and fall. But as I pulled on my skill, as I focused on that force connecting me to the source of the tides, I could feel it.

It was faint, so faint that I would have lost it immediately if I were moving around on a choppy sea. But that wasn’t a problem here. With delicate caution I dipped one oar into the water, slowly turning myself as I focused on that sense. Navigation might be useless, but I had a heading to follow now, one that couldn’t be taken away from me. Slowly at first, I began to row. It took most of my focus to hold onto that feeling of the tidal pull, and so it came as a bit of a shock when my passenger abruptly vanished, collapsing into a puddle of water that sloshed around my bottom. Cautiously I looked around, only to see that the fog had begun to lift. The water was still relatively quiet, but I could feel it as little ripples danced across its surface unimpeded by the magic that had so recently entrapped me.

Navigation now happily decided to inform me that it could begin taking me back to Dirint, and I wearily let it. I kept my awareness focused on Saltwater Sense, ready to act as soon as it seemed like the fog was returning, but it never did. Blindly running out of the fog did lead to another problem, for me to face, though. I was now in a relatively shallow area of the coast, with rocks and reefs all around me.

This was going to be rough.