<span style="font-style: italic">Lift the rock.</span><br/>The rock didn't move.<br/><span style="font-style: italic">Telekinesis on the rock.</span><br/>The jagged, fist-sized rock continued taunting him with its immovability.<br/><span style="font-style: italic">Run telekinesis dot exe, target: rock.</span><br/>"Nyeh!" said the imps outside and the rock still did not move.<br/><br/>Saerimnir the Infinite sighed. He was not sure if it was due to using the telekinetic powers that he may or may not have, but he felt slightly drained. Maybe he had expended power points or wasted mana, and was feeling the effect, or maybe it was just from starring intensely at a fixed point for several minutes.<br/><br/>If he did not figure out what he could actually do then he would have to fight using the wooden stick he had been equipped with as a standard weapon. He lifted it, tried to give it a good swing to test how strong his new body was, and the stick flew out between his fingers.<br/>It was not something he had noticed when he first looked at the Dust-Born profile picture, but his new race has seven fingers on each hand, and it did indeed drop his dexterity to the category: "clumsy". In his mind he still had five fingers, controlling the extra two was... creepy. They did not feel like they belonged there and he had to focus to move them. He imagined this was what phantom limbs were like, only in reverse.<br/>In addition, the fingers were longer and thinner than on his real-world body, so every movement that was instinctual was also wrong. He had tried slapping his forehead earlier when he could not move the rock, and instead poked himself in the eye with one of the extra fingers.<br/><br/>Saerimnir did find the Dust-Born race cool-looking in an alien way. His skin color had gone from a pasty German to split down the middle. Golden on his right side, dark-blue on his left. Batman's Two-Face would kill for this racial choice.<br/>The Dust-Born race looked tall without being it. His new body had gangly limbs that seemed stretched, and the joints were shifted just a little compared to where his human counterparts met. His upper arm was proportionally shorter and the forearm similarly longer. Same for the legs. Moving was weird. Nothing hit where he instinctively thought it would. If he could not learn to fling the rock or rely on the other players, whom he sincerely hoped would join, he would have to flee, and Saerimnir was not sure he even could do that. Every step felt wrong, had to be deliberate. Pretty much by definition running had to be fast. He would stumble over in five steps.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Rock, attack. Ascend. Elevate!</span><br/><br/>"Hi," said GentleRibcrusher, a dwarf of indeterminate, albeit unnerving, gender, and Saerimnir jumped into the air with a start, and to his joy, the rock gently lifted with him in a soft arc across his head, landed near GentleRibcrusher, bounced off the ground and hit her knee.<br/>Despite the shock and the intimidating dwarf, Saerimnir could not stop smiling. He had lifted a rock with his mind. He had powers. Well, he had at least<span style="font-style: italic">a</span>power. He was a psion after all! The laws of physics were his bitch! And the world was his oyster’s bitch!<br/><br/>His smile felt a little bit too wide. Actually a lot too wide, like his otherwise normal-sized mouth retracted and split his face from literally ear to ear.<br/>"Heeeeh," the voice just slipped out and he had to try again: "Hello." He tried to feel his own face. His teeth felt too big. Too many of them. He could trace his teeth around his head. Too long. They had not felt so long before. "Are... are you human? I mean... real life?" It took serious effort to get his smile down. Especially once the next "player" entered, Assguardian.<span style="font-style: italic">Ass</span>guardian! It was uncomfortable smiling like this, but that was too funny. It was worse laughing; his head felt like it split open down the jaw line in the laugh. He could not stop laughing at the newcomer’s name, but he also could not help feeling like a South Park Canadian, the thought of which somehow did nothing to end his laughter. It would take something incredibly scary to kill the smile now.<br/><br/>A gnoll joined the game.<br/>It smiled.<br/>Saerimnir stopped smiling.<br/><br/>The gnoll just stood there, looking more fearsome than any beast Saerimnir had ever seen. He had seen a tiger throw itself against the glass barrier of a zoo, roaring on its hind legs, and this gnoll just standing passively was<span style="font-style: italic">worse</span>.<br/><span style="font-style: italic">It’s another player,</span>said his inner nerd, which now also functioned as his voice of reason, apparently.<span style="font-style: italic">Look, he even has a player name. Come on, man, you chose a weird race. This is just some guy who chose a gnoll. Stop being scared and greet him!</span><br/>“Nyeh!” said the imps as Saerimnir opened his mouth. He looked behind him, trying not to take his eyes off the gnolls. The red barrier was down. It was only then he saw two more had joined the game, a weird little shark… lizard… thing. It was almost adorable, although Saerimnir still did not smile.<br/><span style="font-style: italic">Hell No is a terrible name for our franchise’s Pikachu,</span>commented his inner nerd, who seemed to be confused just what being the voice of reason entailed. Another part of him chimed:<span style="font-style: italic">You need more inner voices. All good psions have at least four.</span><br/><br/>The other was human, some sort of knight in not-so-shining armor, apparently. Eris; that was a nice name. By far the most normal of the players. Maybe she was a fighter or a paladin. Someone sane he could lean on. Someone who could protect him from the terrible imps that were approaching hunched over and shouting nothing but “Nyeh! Nyeh!”.<br/>Saerimnir had been the first to enter this final cave, and had wandered around trying to unleash his psionic might. As a result he was closer to the red barrier than anyone else, and he was not a front-liner, less so without any powers! So Saerimnir the Infinite turned and ran, got five steps and stumbled on his weird legs. He fell in the way of GentleRibCrusher, rolled on the ground ungracefully and hurt. A lot. This was the prize of choosing a spindly body. Should have been a gnoll.<br/><br/><span style="font-style: italic">Telekinesis. Target: self. Levitate.</span><br/>Nothing happened, so he had to get up the old-fashioned way. One of the imps was going around GentleRibCrusher, moving by way of… bunny hops. It was wearing a little miner’s helmet and carried a pickaxe.<br/>Little ability to flee, armed with only a stick. Saerimnir had the advantage of reach and the little creature did not seem like it would be able to swing the pickaxe with any great speed, but it was still a pickaxe! This was dangerous!<br/>“Nyeh” the creature said, and Saerimnir lashed out with his long, spindly arm and slapped it on the side of the head with the stick.<br/>“Nyeh!” it shouted, hopefully in pain, and swung its axe at Saerimnir, who dodged by way of simply being out of reach. Also, he did some weird maneuver that looked uncannily like stumbling around and trying to regain balance on legs that were too long.<br/>Saerimnir slapped the imp again. It nyeh’ed. He hit its wrist and it still did not fall down. In his mind, something was complaining that a low-level encounter like this should die even to the flimsiest hits but this beast seemed only mildly annoyed. This horrid, dumb… weird… creature should be dead!<br/><br/>The stone flew from the ground; hit the imp hard in the face, and drew blood from its eye. Saerimnir looked with a mixture of pride at being able to move things with his mind, and shock at having seriously injured another creature. The stone kept flying, turned about like a boomerang and hit the imp a second time in the back of the head and it finally fell over. Saerimnir wasted no time kicking the pickaxe away, almost falling over as he lost balance. Apart from a slight headache, he had managed to survive his first battle ever, provided the other places were doing their parts and not leaving him to fend off more terror imps. And honestly, they could not be doing worse than he had.