July 21st, 5 AC
The evening was turning towards night, even if you couldn’t tell by the ambient light, by the time the trunk of Treeholm began to bleed through the overhead cover. Stretching skyward in unapologetic splendor. Ok, maybe he was a bit biased. It was one of the more impressive Thresholds. And not just because the skyscraper-sized fake tree was awe-inspiringly large. He definitely wasn't compensating either! Besides, size wasn't everything. Not when survival was the name of the game, and frankly looming large was a risk compared to a nice hidden underground stronghold.
But underground didn't grant access to the lower Jungle canopy.
350 feet above the jungle floor a whole new world opened. A vibrant one where even a bit of sunlight filtered down! Filled with exotic ingredients, both plant and animal... and sometimes halfway between.
Like the Amethyst Plum Vine. Its namesake fruit was iridescently purple and grew to the size of a human head. A right tasty head! It was also one of very few ingredients potent enough to counteract the contamination inside Tier 3 meat. Of course, the gnarled man thick vine it grew from had numerous prehensile fronds and fed itself on arboreal rodents, or the occasional human who was about the same size. Some called it the vampire vine and frankly, the name wasn't much of a stretch.
And while the Amethyst Plums were valuable, they weren’t the top value. That throne belonged to the imaginatively named Life flower. Another vine-grown ingredient, but this one was the main ingredient in a potion to regrow limbs. Something that had taken Jenney over 4 years of searching to find.
Healing of any kind wasn't easy. The injection of foreign mana was a poison that was often worse than the wound it was meant to heal. The only solution they'd found was to slow it down. Drag healing out over enough time that the wounded party could purify themselves between doses. And that just wasn't possible when you wanted to regrow an entire limb. Too much healing all at once.
He was no doctor, but a bone sticking out beyond the stump was just going to rot. Likewise, skin or flesh without the bone wasn't going to work. You had to heal in sections big enough to be self-sustaining, but not so big that you couldn’t overcome the body's rejection. An impossibility with a standard healing potion.
The flower changed that. It contained a well of vitality mana that was both gentle and easily converted by the user. It still took several weeks. Several painful weeks of constant self-purification but it happened.
Any time the ingredients became available, Jenney'd brew up a cauldron of it. And despite the ruinous prices involved, even after Jenney sold it at cost, there was always a line of desperados begging to buy. They even fought over the right to do so. And outrageous as the results were, Timothy had always understood those violent few. Hope was a gift, but hope just out of reach was a curse beyond all bearing.
There were far too many reaching out for that elusive bit of hope. Some of them former flower harvesters themselves. These vines weren't carnivorous. Symbiotes of the great trees rather than parasites. Draining water and nutrients from the trees in exchange for healing. Filling cracks and fissures up with sap that killed fungal infections and discouraged insects.
They were as close to pacifism as anything was in the Jungle. That didn’t make harvesting them safe. The flowers had to be harvested in full bloom. A state that only lasted three days. Three days of conflict because it wasn’t just humans that were healed by the flower. A battle royal would erupt where the losers fell to fertilize the tree.
Even the pacifistic flower thrived on violence and death. Just at one remove.
The life flowers weren't the only gold to be found up there either. From potent high-tier meats and hides to various mana-rich shelf mushrooms and eggs (He really missed chickens!). Even exotic vegetables and medicinal herbs could be found in the mind-boggling arboreal gardens. Literal gardens growing in sunbeams hundreds of feet above the jungle floor. Complete with rich soil, ground cover, exotic plants even ponds. All held in cleft branches and fed by the daily rains. Their existence still gave Timothy a headache.
The heights were flush with all manner of treasures not to mention an exuberant ecosystem of both prey and predator to fight for it. As with most things post-change, there was an emphasis on predators. It wasn't safe up in those lofty branches. Many had fallen, both literally and figuratively.
And many more would continue to do so. It wasn't even a waste. It had seemed that way at first, risking precious Guardians in pursuit of wealth. But that wasn't it at all. They weren’t risking their lives for ‘just’ wealth. Those resources were desperately needed. Humanity had survived the change but that didn't mean they could maintain that survival without sacrifices.
Humans were growing in power, but so were beasts. There were far more tier 2 beasts around than when they'd first stepped out of the tutorial 5 years ago. And it was a constant struggle to keep those beasts culled from the Riverlands. For that matter, keeping even stronger beasts from wandering in from outside was half the reason they'd started the Threshold project!
The Tier 3 beasts they killed all came from outside. Not surprising really. Humans purged the high-tier beasts from the Riverlands and had grown stronger feasting on that loot. How could the beasts be any different? Feasting on one another until a true alpha rose from the ashes to dominate an area. They too would see a situation where in constant conflict the winners grew ever stronger while the losers became food.
Timothy shook his head, glad of relative safety that came from passing through the outer wards. Or Konami's protection as some jokers put it. Now they had a different set of defenses to navigate, and thankfully a pair of guides to walk them through it.
Donald flashed a heavily runed amulet at the first guide, then with a few hand signals they were off. Timothy easily dropped into his assigned place in the quickly forming congo line, being very careful to place his feet exactly where the person in front of him had. He glanced away from his feet briefly as the person in front of him half disappeared into a forest of ferns, rising his own height again above them.
He had to turn off his detection spells as the acid fern warning started going off in his ear like an air raid siren. He shuddered slightly and made damn sure he kept his eyes peeled for the slightly darker green and his feet in the footsteps of the man ahead. He'd prefer his flesh remained unmelted, all things considered. The belts of acid ferns made a useful defense, but he was still glad he wasn't the first person in line. Plants weren't like rock walls; you didn't plant them and expect them to remain only inside the colorful borders you drew.
Of course, that was the point. Snugly blankets and cotton pillows would hardly defend the Threshold. A self-expanding ring of flesh-melting death? Ya, that would do the trick. So, step by step he snaked his way through the ferns, careful not to damage them or the ground below. A trail through the defenses was pretty obviously a bad thing.
Then almost as suddenly as they stepped in, he was clear of the ferns, and the confusion spells that turned them into a nightmarish corn maze. The new layout was something else. Tree roots rose above the jungle floor like a mess of intertwined snakes. House thick snakes, but still. With a short, by the day’s standards at least, leap he bounced up to a fairly small exposed rootlet, only 5 feet in diameter, then up onto its full-sized parent before following the line into a new maze of twisting and turning roots. Heavily trapped roots from what his mana senses were telling him.
Slightly scuffing his feet, Timothy nodded. It felt somewhere between petrified wood and slate. They were almost there. Almost on the order of hand grenades and horseshoes, but still. Following along as precisely as possible he bounced from root to root as directed. Ducking underneath some, onto minor rootlets in a jumping puzzle for others. Timothy nodded, impressed despite himself. They'd added to the defensive layer even in the last week.
That was the kind of dedication it took to survive. Layers and layers of constantly improving defenses. Sure, the outer wards were his work and damn impressive work at that. But beasts can and did stumble through it on occasion. If that was the only defense then the Threshold was just one lucky victory or missed flaw away from a destruction.
Timothy ducked beneath a twisting overhead root hair that was thicker than his wrist, and deftly lept one root over, finally spotting the trunk proper rising up in the distance and breaking through the omnipresent mist. Considering the density of the confusion wards that meant it was actually quite close! He fantasized for a few moments of hot water and soap on his skin. He'd been jonesing for it for a week now, not to mention hot food with actual spices! The thought had barely popped up before he crushed it.
This was the prime ambush time. The moments right before the end of a journey when thoughts move to pleasure and off of danger. Ol' Ironside's training held strong. Even as he doubled down on pushing out his senses, he could feel most of the rest of the team doing the same.
You couldn't stop the urge, but you could counteract it by forcing yourself to a higher state of alertness. No matter how many layers of wards and traps they'd passed through, they were still outside and survivors never dropped their guard till they were in the actual fort.
Twisting and ducking under a final root he spotted the entrance. It wasn't obvious, but he'd helped to build the damn place. It gave him certain advantages. The slightly off-color knot wasn't much to go on, but with a guide stopped in front it didn’t exactly take a dead father to guide his sword.
The guide waited another ten seconds for the trailing members of the line to catch up, then lept out into open space, face first into the massive wall that was the trunk. The magic-assisted leap easily tossed him over the fifteen feet of space and on a collision course with the craggy bark. A collision that never came as he slid through.
Timothy waited, then as his turn came up lept out, sliding through the illusion before quickly darting over to put his back to a wall. Fools and the very green would stand in place, then fall in the same when the next person crashed into them. He'd rather not be the standup routine for the hidden guards.
The room he found himself in was shaped like a lemon, with one long arc showing the outside shape of the tree and another mirroring it on the other side. The interior didn't try to hide its origin with a polished black stone-like material with tree rings in a dimly glowing crimson. They gave off enough light to see by, if barely but even with that, there was no visible exit from the room. Considering the people still arriving through a solid-looking wall, that didn't mean much. He could feel the pinging of a dozen guards’ intent. Spread out around the room from unseen firing slits and murder holes.
The entryway of any Threshold was a kill room. But there was a decent variety in how it was accomplished. One thing for certain though, comfort was never the main priority. Crammed in like sardines Timothy waited, doing a soft count and nodding when the next heavily laden person flying through the wall made it sixteen plus one of the two guides.
The room wasn't big enough to fit them all, even without considering the loot bags. But with a bit of squishing, they'd make it in two sets instead of three. That still left twenty-plus out in the cold waiting. While he was safe inside. Not a great feeling honestly, but more and more he was forced to get used to it...
It still didn't feel right, even if he couldn't argue with the logic.
With a soft hiss, a golden mist bled into the chamber, starting at their feet but rapidly rising to fill the room in fluffy, sticky clouds. Despite the ich factor, Timothy forced himself to take a deep breath and hold it while the cleansing mist rose above his head.
Mushroom spores, contagious molds and scent trackers. Not to mention curses or insects. Curses were the least of those risks. Magic-born ticks, lice and bedbugs were a special kind of hell, but fungal infections weren't much better. With the greatly increased growth speed, it didn't take much for blankets to become a mushroom farms. Possibly poisonous or hallucinogenic farms. Not a nice way to go.
As quickly as it rose up, the mist dispersed but they weren't quite done yet. A sharp white light pulsed through the room in a seizure-inducing show for another five seconds, then faded leaving bars of black in his eyes and the dim red light that was previously plenty, suddenly lacking. Without his eyes to see, he almost missed the small changes around him. Almost. Hanna's cheekbones were considerably less sharp now and Gongon sported a splattering of acne across his pale cheeks and nose.
Timothy hid a sigh; the light was a late addition. A fix for a defensive flaw he hadn't seen coming. One that cost over a dozen lives when a ghost-faced monkey replaced the last man in line and followed a returning hunting party through the wards. Just as well they were the first lives lost. The bereaved looking for a scapegoat damn near caused a riot. 'Live and learn' sounded so much nicer than 'not everyone died so we learned.'
The guide did a quick visual confirmation of humanity, then raised a badge, a piece of thick leather embossed with an image of the very tree they stood in. The badge lit up, not uniformly but pulsing in a specific pattern. The code of the day.
Finally, a previously blank wall section twisted in on itself. Irising open like an organic Stargate with the blood ‘wood's’ crimson grain structure spinning out like a mandala. It wasn't a large whole, just enough for one at a time with the bulging packs. Still, it didn't take long. There was no lollygagging nor the interminable collecting bags from overhead bins here. How people could drag such a simple thing out before the change still boggled his mind. Now he dreamed of the convenience... He let the thought die as he stepped through into ‘safe’ territory.
Finally, as Ol' Ironsides would say, inside the wire. The tension started to bleed from him. It was a process, not an event and it a highly individual one. Hannah immediately began reapplying her illusionary makeup while Votey started twitching. No one made even the smallest comment. Stress reactions were the norm, not the exceptions. More than that, they were healthy. It was the ones who bottled it up you had to watch out for.
The human mind was both incredibly flexible, powerful and fragile, all at the same time. Veteran guardians learned to bend, flexing beneath the stress. As for those who didn't? There was half a floor under Runehold just for the Broken. Half prison, half retirement home. Lethal spells and flashbacks did not go well together.
Rage and guilt twisted in his belly at the memory. It was a poor reward for their service, but the Hold hadn't had a choice. Human flesh could be healed, limbs regrown, but the mind? The mind was an entirely different kettle of fish.
Timothy shook off the dark train of thought and began his own little 'home' ritual, first touching his toes, then doing a few jumping jacks and hip twists. The simple, and frankly stupid ritual helped to ground him, if not to really let it all out. That would come later when he finally had his bath. And a long bath it would be. Time spent ‘out in the dark’ had a way of building up more stress than you realized.
Just the name gave part of it away. The Dark. Sometimes The Deep Dark. Not particularly light and delightful descriptions.
The Green was a somewhat less pejorative description and one Timothy really should be using, but it just hadn't taken. There was something about the eternal dim beneath the overarching canopy that triggered an instinctive dread. Trees so large they rivaled old-world skyscrapers. Shadows that disappeared only when they joined into utter darkness, triumphant at defeating the light.
They’d braved that wild, dark, predator-filled landscape to build the new threshold. But ‘building’ implied it was not ‘built’ yet. Being outside the holds at night was nearly a death sentence. Made survivable only by concentrating some of the best guardians and an incredibly expensive set of portable single-use wards. Even with that, it was still nerve-racking.
He’d slept with one eye open if he'd slept at all for the entire week. Trying to tune out the sounds of combat as his guards did their jobs. Forcing himself not to join in as his will and mana needed to be focused on finishing the wards. Even a few hours earlier. Some attacks were minor, a cat trying to sneak in or a small-scale rodent nest (20 plus 3 feet long rats, that weighed over 60 pounds each). Their sense of smell defeated the sight wards and small minds too simple for confusion to take hold.
Still, simple minds meant simple attacks, and they'd died quickly enough. Annoying but not terribly dangerous. Not like a large-scale nest with 200 plus rats. The real nail biters were when a large passel of hogs blundered in or when an Earth Toad snagged Barker with its 30-foot tongue. Thankfully they were swallowers, not chewers but the poor bastard hadn't smelled the same since.
They'd killed hundreds of beasts in the week they'd been there, even with all the preparations. That was expected, even necessary. A new blood haven needed feeding after all. They'd been pushed a bit farther into the safety margins than he'd like though. They'd come out fully loaded, with extra weapons, enchantments, stored spells, healing potions, bandages, the works and here they were ragged, bleeding and depleted. Pushing the limits of contamination on the wounded and with nerves tuned to a hair trigger. They weren't safe to be around. Not yet.
It was a damn good thing they were several cuts above the required Tier for this area and traveling rather than hunting. Though with the amount of loot in the bags piled around him, it was sometimes hard to tell the difference.
Still, even if it was an easier zone, that just made it possible. Not a good idea. They were all in desperate need of time. Time to heal. Time to purify, time to regen mana and equally import, time to just unwind.
Just a little bit longer... He itched to start, but instead remained, if not still then at least mostly stationary. And surrounded by teammates who were twitching and fidgeting like nervous wretches. He suppressed the usual irritation instinctively. Too many people for too long. He needed a break.
Not their fault though. There was nothing else to be done. Not yet. It was verboten to cut loose when the rest of the party couldn't do the same. It was also just plain common sense. You traveled together, fought together, bled together. The least you could do is wait to relax together. A team was your lifeline. Your family in all but blood. Nothing could be allowed to interfere with that.
Moments ticked by, then the clouds of nerves lifted as the wall irised open once again and the stream of ragged, bloodied cloaked guardians began pouring in. Timothy let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
He snapped through a quick headcount, aware that at least five others were doing the same. Relief hit him as it came up full. Logically, it wasn't going to be otherwise this far inside the outer wards, but logic didn't always come out on top.
With a nod from Old Sven, the sergeant of the guard standing to their left knocked on a door to his side. Marked with a stylized open safe containing a bulging bag not that different from the ones sitting at their feet.
The door opened quickly and the assessor ducked his head out. A few words from Sven later and that worthy started hefting two bags at a time and dragging them back into his room.
It was a prestigious job, though not one Timothy had ever desired to do. Between the Assessor and his Harvester assistants, they'd work through the night to process and evaluate the haul. Their pay was a percentage of the total, but they also were required to purchase anything they evaluated. Between the desire to make more, but not be stuck with overpriced loot, and regular checks with a truth spell it was decently reliable. And more importantly, convenient.
The bargaining and whatnot could wait till tomorrow thankfully. Tomorrow’s problems were tomorrow's. Timothy stepped over his own smaller bag and followed the flow of bodies down the narrow hallway and around a smooth bend to the transit shaft.
He gave the ten-foot-wide open cylinder an appreciative glance. It was his work, and a pretty impressive piece if he did say so. The runes carved into its sides were bright with stored mana. He tapped the jellyfish looking squiggle even as he shaped a mental construct, bridging the gap between the two with his will and triggering the enchantment before leaping upwards through what felt like water in the Bahamas on a clear day. Dazzling motes of light floated while the air itself seemed to engulf him with mild pressure. Not claustrophobic, but more like a blanket. Comfortable and safe.
Freeing even as gravity lost its hold on him. Lightly bounding upwards, he kicked off the opposite wall after each 15-foot bound on his way up the massive tree.
A bubbling laugh slipped through his lips as a hidden shove sent him spinning upwards like Taz from the old cartoons. This was a real way to climb!
No stairs, just more pleasure than the wind tunnel he'd once paid to simulate sky diving in. Shoving his arms out to reduce the speed of the spin, then snapping them back in in time to make a three-point landing on the wall, he dodged backward clipping Votey's legs 'accidentally' with his shoulder.
Hey, what goes around... A few deft bounces and redirects let him dodge most of the good-natured brawl. Most. He took in a deep ooph of breath as an elbow struck just right, but laughter fought with wheezes as they spilled out of a doorway onto the lounge level. Chatting and boasting about their ideal end of the night. About preferred tipple or foods worth custom ordering. Whether their first choice was food, bath, beer, companionship or something stronger, hey, Timothy didn't judge. You do you.
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Drawing up the back of the pack, Timothy gave the edge of the doorway a proud pat. It was one of his better works. Jellyfish blood from the coast mixed with ground dandelion seeds filled the runes. Not the cheapest with the shipping costs. But nothing rare either. It was a good reminder that not every bit of magic had to be aimed at weapons work. There was a place for fun and comfort too.
He was tempted for a moment, to turn around and just float in the shaft, but it was night was fast approaching and the hunting teems would be streaming in soon. It was a bit of a social faux pas to linger in the shaft during heavy use times. Not a written rule per se, but a custom. And customs had a way of being even stronger than rules in most of the new communities. To Timothy's immense satisfaction and with his occasional help, the letter of the law was pretty brief and focused on major. Anything beyond that was left to custom. Paradoxically, while actual law-breaking pretty much meant a flogging or exile, custom could be both kinder and rough and ready.
He regretfully decided against it. Custom only spoke to the local equivalent of rush hour. He'd just have to pop back in a couple of hours when the games began. And what games they were! Blitzball meets rugby with a side of parkour and maybe some mosh pit thrown in. Timothy grinned; it sounded like just what the doctor ordered.
With statue-worthy muscle heads being the in fashion out here, female companionship was going to be a bit lean. Unless he wanted to throw coin around or waste mana in posturing. He wasn’t above that when the mood took him, but it just seemed like too much work tonight. No, Nullgyball would be a very nice end to the evening.
That left him a few hours of free time, and he knew precisely how he wanted to waste them. First though, he followed the mob into a large, warmly lit common room. The grown-up and polished version of what they’d left this morning.
Small round mushroom tables and leather couches dotted the floor as if grown from seeds tossed out by a blind man while the arched roof overhead was hung with lamps. But lamps aimed up not down. Even here it wasn’t wise to ruin your night vision. The light reflected against the faux wood ceilings in a comfortable, if dim, glow. The walls were similarly splattered with trophies, knickknacks and Dabo boards. The bastard child of darts and beer pong, it was played by tossing small deliberately unbalanced shards of bone into a stack of sideways cups. A small enchantment kept the colors shifting and randomly shuffling around. Points were based not just on the tossed bones staying in the cup, but on the color too.
Straight skill games were hard to arrange with superhumans being divided by levels. Even alcohol wasn't enough to even things up, you had to throw a bit of chance into the mix to keep it interesting. Glancing away from the tacky constructs, Timothy let his eyes follow across the wall. There were some legitimately nice pieces of art up there. His eyes turned the corner to the wall behind the bar and a small wry smile twisted his lips. Art made way for a solid stack of barrels here. Covering all the available space behind the full-length polished purple-heart bar.
Sven, nodding at several of the permanent residents, jumped up on a table and turned to face them. “Cut loose! You earned it and there is more than enough coin in the loot bags to pay. Just make sure wounds get taken care of before you get to drinking, hmm? It was rough out there, and I know we planned to push on tomorrow, but I don't see it happening. Not safely in the condition were in.”
He glanced around at visible wounds and ripped, blood-stained clothing. “The day after will have to do. A night to party, half a day to recover and a half a day to repair and re-arm. A good night's sleep without a hangover,” there were a few guilty chuckles that cut out abruptly as Sven spoke somewhat angrily over the top of them. “I’m looking at you Rog and I’m not laughing,” The burly, red-nosed gentleman stared at his feet abashedly.
Timothy nodded, poor damn fool was lucky to be alive after that event, “-and you can expect a nice bonus all around for a successfully built new Threshold and three cheers for all that left returning intact!”
He got his three cheers and then some! Voices bounced and echoed inside the sound-warded room as wild waves of jubilance broke out. And not just from their party. The locals sitting here and there with their own mugs of unidentified liquids joined in with vigor. There were no city slicks here. Jungle runners one and all. They knew the joy of a full crew returning safe and without major injuries, and the sorrow when that wasn’t the case. Add in a close new Threshold. One offering variety and perhaps a stronger hunting ground for those pushing the limits and it was damn near Christmas.
You didn't make it this far out if you didn't have the drive in you. Drive and a willingness to dream big. He could practically taste the hope and ambition in the air. They all wanted to be the next big winner of the lottery. The next one to bring in the first Life Flower or Amethyst Plum. Even if many of the minor prizes were a hard death. Timothy stepped on that morbid thought.
There were wins out there large enough to set a full team up for retirement, or to boost them up a minor layer. Even a full tier if they were really lucky. When your understanding was only middle of the road, it was possible to paper over the cracks with wealth. For now, at least. It just took a lot of it!
Timothy turned away from the bar as their group split to pursue their various preferred pleasures. Sven was already heading for the bar to arrange sleeping arrangements with the local Cardea. The foursome named after the Roman goddess, guardian of the thresholds, were the governors, owners and first line of defense for the satellite fortresses. Bound together into a semi-permanent gestalt, theirs were the minds that maintained the wards, guided the growth and built new defenses.
Part bartender, part innkeeper, part stablemaster and part master of arms they filled a vital and somewhat niche role. Few true jungle runners were willing to be tied down as guards when they could make far more hunting, but the draw of control had never really gone away. It wasn't for everyone, especially with the degree of forced mental intimacy brought by the bond, but there were more than a few who were attracted by the thought.
It was still a minority. The taste for adventure could be addicting, not to mention the feeling of growing in power. Maintaining that growth had them here, risking their life regularly to pull treasures from the surroundings.
The Cardea still had that drive, but theirs was a different path to power. Successful hunters themselves to afford the down payment, Timothy wasn’t about to loan money out to the unproven, nor to someone who didn’t have a stake of their own in the pot. They still needed to grow. Bound to the thresholds, the ward boundaries were about as far as they could travel, so they had to come up with some other way to make it up.
That somehow was the guest price. It wasn't a low price either. Sometimes as much as a third of a hunter's take. And despite the cost, everyone paid. Paid in full and with little argument. Night brought death; they knew this. Even with the price, the value of the hunting grounds out here was night and day higher than in the Riverlands.
So, they came in droves, paying their slot in flesh, hide, blood and bone to living building and a portion of growth recourses for the Cardea. Between their take and the additional study time and experience channeling the massive quantities of mana involved, the Cardea were usually the strongest Guardians in a given area.
A comforting truth for those who slept under their guard. And for themselves, Timothy reflected. With their bindings, they couldn’t help but go down with the ship if the worst happened. The residents could run, they could not.
Customary checks and balances. It all worked out. If with some friction here and there. People being people a few Cardea had gotten a bit too big for their britches. Charging higher and higher prices or making up asinine rules. They forgot that no one was forced to stay, and they couldn’t harvest their own hunting ranges. There were enough Thresholds that poorly run locations quickly became lost customers.
The origins hadn’t had to get involved yet as the situation was self-correcting. Rules were changed back and apologies offered before any were fully abandoned by the hunters. But Timothy wondered what they would do when it inevitably did reach that point. Humans were humans. Even with careful selections and training sooner or later you would get an incompetent dick in charge.
Timothy shrugged, he wasn’t going to solve all the problems of the world today. Walking back towards the shaft he nodded to Nix who was heading in the same direction. “You looking forward to a hot meal or a bath more?”
She grimaced turning her head and pointing to the bloodied back of it. It was a very nice head of hair normally, and on display with the hood of her cloak down. He almost missed the missing chunk between blood, mud and other substances rubbed into the tangled mess.
It looked raw and angry against the girl-next-door bob of brown hair in a pixie cut. “Bath, brushed under a glue vine like a noob early in the run, it’s been driving me nuts all day.”
He winced. Glue vines were exactly what they sounded like. Coated in a thick layer of sap they fed on the decaying corpses of insects and, occasionally, significantly larger animals, that stuck to them in passing.
The sap was strong enough to use as mortar if you didn’t have the spells to join the stones. It was also a component Timothy used to make artificial Amber. Not as symbolically useful as the naturally occurring stuff, but still useful. For mortar, you’d want to boil it down a bit, but even raw it stuck like superglue. Or magically hardening epoxy.
He wondered why she hadn't had her hood up at the time, not that he was going to ask. Laxness was its own reward, but asking more would be rubbing it in. Besides, she must have felt the glue take and chose to rip it out rather than take the time to cut it. That was badass territory by any measure.
Besides the wound, the leftover glue had mixed with blood and mud into a frightful brick-like mess. It was going to be a stone-cold bitch to work out, baths or no.
He could help… He squashed the thought before it reached his mouth. She hadn't asked and she was a grown woman. If she needed it, she was more than capable of letting him know. Besides, Da was constantly nagging him to let people try to fix things on their own first. How else would they learn? It was easy to cross the line from helping to enabling.
“No such excuse for me, I just want to feel clean.” He put the longing he felt into both his word and intent. He could feel the layers of mulch coating him. Sweat, dust and other much less pleasant materials forming an extra layer beneath his clothes. The detritus of most of a week tacky and sticking enough to fix those clothes to his skin. He was quite good at lifestyle spells, and could easily have pulled a cleaning spell. He just hadn’t been willing to waste the will or mana on comfort before the wards were up and after he'd been too exhausted.
Bounding down the shaft he made a few extra bounces and redirects to avoid the cross-flow of newcomers, but he managed it adroitly. Even threw out several greetings and back slaps in passing. He recognized about a quarter of them. Not surprising considering Treeholm was settled out of Paradise his second home these days.
While guardians could, and did, move to whatever Threshold fit them, that didn't mean they weren't human. Proximity to friends and family was a heavy draw. The amount of wealth they were pulling out of the canopy meant it wasn’t just Paradisians, they just made the biggest single chunk. He spotted a dozen nationalities and quadruple that of magic styles.
He said hello where appropriate and gave polite nods to the rest. Even made a few promises to catch up later, but he didn't stop. That bath was calling to him.
Nix did the same, only more so. He was the barely social wizard, after all, cooped up in his tower chanting and spying. Even in his more socially inclusive role as a teacher didn't expand his social circles much beyond his students. She had no such problem and if she had, she wouldn’t have snagged such a plum assignment. When you lived out of each other’s pockets for a week drama and rough edges were not tolerable. Proven competence was a must, but so was amiability and being team-oriented. He didn’t pick her, or any of the others, names out of a hat. Not with his life on the line. Or rather Arthur, Ol' Ironsides now, didn't. He wasn't such a fool as to do the picking himself when he had an expert on hand.
They dropped down past the entrance level and into the underground. Soft glowing, flowering vines graced the sides of the shaft, surrounding the various openings at each level, well spread out to keep the fake tree stable. He kicked off the back wall and arrowed through the opening marked with the carving of a bathtub above it, pulsing his belt enchantment to reduce his weight to nothing, and twisting lightly to land at a slow walk. He was not an acrobat by inclination or training, but he was a professional cheater and didn't mind playing to his strengths.
Nix, of course, snagged the grab bar above the door and did a casual somersault before landing beside him with all the grace of a large cat. Some people didn't need to cheat.
The bath was a little piece of home, smaller in scale than the Runehold special, now present in every settlement of the trade network, but still the same style and more importantly, feel. He dug out a personal token, merely a coin with his mark on it, but one made from metal, which made it fairly valuable in its own right.
Like a black AM ex card, it made a statement. He tossed it to a cook in a small shack along the wall. “Carnitas with all the extras and a jar of the red tea, please.”
“Sure thing.” The guardian, at least seven feet of lean muscle, well covered in small scars took his order. Why the scarred man was running a food stand Timothy couldn’t say. Maybe he needed some extra money or it was a hobby, but he was no merchant. His aura spoke of disciplined violence and contained power. A jungle runner doing a bit of moonlighting.
Timothy glanced at Nix with a raised eyebrow and getting a thumbs up, spoke again. “Better triple that.” The man gave Nix's tall, ripped shape a few moments of attention, then nodded in admiration and agreement. All that muscle and size took a commensurate amount of fuel. Timothy felt like a kid during the company bring your family to work day.
The not-a-shopkeeper pulled something like three pounds of pulled pork out of a bubbling stone stew pot and tossed into onto the grill, a polished slab of stone inlaid with a few runes the man was pumping a minor amount of mana into. It sizzled madly, throwing up a small cloud of fragrant steam. Timothy had to breathe through his mouth for a moment to stop a sneezing fit, but those peppers would be tasty later. “You want the tea now, or with your meal? Be five to ten.”
“With the meal works. You can link me?” The coin was marked with Timothy's symbol, and its twin, cut from the same ingot, sat in his pocket. If the man had the skills to go with his scars, he’d be able to easily manage it. There were protections in place to prevent more than that, but it would take a skilled Pathfinder to make them necessary. Timothy wasn't fool enough to leave unprotected links lying around.
He nodded, “Ten-ish then.” He repeated himself, pushing a lid off a stone crock to his right and reaching in to fish out multi-colored peppers and squash from the pickling solution. Everything grew faster now. That included mold and bacteria. Nothing kept for long without a lot of help.
Reaching upward he plucked a head-sized onion from a dangling string of such and started dicing. Deftly flipping the stone essence knife about with the speed and grace of someone who fought with knives, not just cooked with them. Timothy shook his head as he walked away.
Following the flow of traffic over towards the cleaning pools and shifting over the wall of cubbies beside it before quickly stripping down. He took a few extra minutes to go over his equipment, charm belt, staff, bone jewelry and a few hide scrolls. He really wanted that bath... but discipline took over with hardly a tinge of effort. Gear got checked first. Always.
With a grimace, he took a step to the side and sat at the small table set there for this very purpose. It held a few oils, some cleaning solutions and a number of the simpler enchanting and repair tools. With a bit of elbow grease, he worked the dirt, sweat and blood out of the folds in his belt, hover croc hide was tougher than many old-world metals but its natural wrinkles and roughness seemed to collect dirt. The enchantment was still humming along just fine at least.
He touched up a few of charms, reinforcing the meaning and pulled out his carving tools to sharpen a few angles where a rune was looking pretty worn or damaged. The usual maintenance, nothing to worrisome. His kit had held up pretty well to the abuse.
That done, he slid a few pieces of bone jewelry on for safety, ear clamps, necklace and two rings. Then he hung the remaining equipment in the cubie before shutting and throwing a quick ward on the door.
Probably overkill. Thievery was becoming a problem in the Riverland Holds, but not out here. That didn't stop him from adding an additional ward to the door. Good habits took repetition. Besides, while thievery was highly unlikely, curiosity was not. He wouldn't put it past people to take a curious 'look' at his gear. It was several steps above what was generally available and it wouldn't be the first time someone tried to figure out how or why. Not that he minded the pursuit of excellence, but letting someone get a look at his protective gear was a small step from trying to find a way through it.
The jungle cloth robe, already fraying and broken in places, he just wadded up and tossed into the appropriate trash hamper. It might be fed to the Haven, or if the strands were still mostly intact, remade into more of the one-size-fits-no-one bath robes hanging over by the door.
His gear secured; he hopped down into the three-foot-deep cleaning pool. Grabbing a scrub brush from a rack of such to the side he went to town on the built-up gunk of a week of half-assed sponge baths done without fully undressing.
He tried to hit that happy medium of people watching while he worked. He was aware and appreciative of the eye feast around him. Unclothed females in the shape that these were in expected a certain amount of attention. Ignoring them was as rude as staring. But Goldilocks that bitch and everyone got to be happy.
Including him. He was an intact male for fuck sake, and Nix? Nix was worth a stare or three. Tiered meat had given her five inches of extra height and a clearly defined six-pack without removing the curves that topped it. The woman was built and he let his eyes and face communicate that as he continued to scrub away the muck and grime. She was also taken, so he didn’t linger beyond an appreciative glance or three.
Her return look of confusion almost made him crack up. Subverted expectation was the base of much good comedy after all. He was an acknowledged magical powerhouse and she well knew it. But he certainly didn't look like it. He knew that look, had seen it dozens of times. It was half the reason his token was so ostentatious; wealth had a power all of its own. He didn’t mind leveraging that power, it just wasn’t something he felt the need to parade around all the time.
Timothy was short, slim and, unless he was actively working a spell, innocuous. Frankly, without a pile of enchanted objects hanging around him, he looked and felt like a norm to all but the very best perceptions. A short norm at that. A handy thing in the Holds if he felt like going incognito. But a real pain in the ass when it came to picking up chicks or convincing a shopkeeper that you were there to shop, not steal.
After a last rinse he climbed out and jumped into the massive soaking pool, releasing a relieved sigh as the water began to shove tendrils of relaxing heat into his muscles. He just drifted for several minutes. Enjoying a state of nothing. Until his head dipped enough for water to pour into his nose. He snapped upright coughing and half sneezing. He glanced around briefly, seeing several people deliberately not paying attention.
He felt a red tide rising up his neck. Damn instincts, why should he feel embarrassed? If he needed to act silly to relax then he'd act silly and damn them in the doing. He dunked his head beneath the surface, letting the embarrassment wash away as his heartbeat faded back to a slower beat.
Able to breathe again and back in the proper mindset, he lazily swam forward and snagged an unoccupied pillar seat. A forest of irregular stone columns in a white and gray granite held up the vaulted ceiling above and descended beneath the surface below. Breaking up the basketball court-sized pool into a series of seemingly intimate nooks and crannies. Like the roots of the earth rising through a hot spring. It was warm and friendly, rather than the impersonal expanse of an old-world public pool.
Or maybe that was just the lack of bleach fumes and screaming children. Timothy shrugged. Either way, he loved it. The only negative was the blocked sight lines. With the eye candy around him that was a serious detriment.
Tradeoffs, tradeoffs.
With a laugh, he leaned back into the pillar stretching his arms up. It would be a bit till dinner, he reached back fumbling for a moment, before pulling a vine loop free and slipping it over his arms to rest high on his chest. A nap would be a fine thing.