Chapter 53 - A Fighter

At that point the meeting was pretty much done. Colonel Turner dismissed me, saying he and his people would work on a plan to get to Alfred and his people. I had a sneaking suspicion it wasn’t going to happen, though. They were too wrapped up in their local war with the avians. Getting past them in any sort of timely manner wasn’t going to be simple, and it wasn’t their focus.

Farnsworth was waiting outside the room when I came out. I was surprised to see him; I figured he was too important to run escort duty and said as much.

He laughed. “Yeah, I suppose you’d think that. But my job is to take care of whatever the Colonel says needs doing. In this case, that’s keeping an eye on the only tier five on the base who isn’t wearing this uniform.”

Okay, that made a certain level of sense. I mean, if I went on a rampage, most people in this place wouldn’t be able to stop me, but Farnsworth would have a good crack at it. “Yeah, I see the logic there.”

“You do? I thought maybe you’d be offended at the notion,” he replied.

“Why would I be offended that you guys see me as a threat? With the crystals I have, I’m basically a living weapon,” I told him. “I get it. It’s okay. Where are we off to next?”

He shook his head, looking bemused. “You’re nothing like most kids I deal with here. You sure you don’t want to sign up? I’m betting the Colonel would give you some nice rank to go along with the stones you’ve already got.”

My head felt so much clearer now that I was away from the Colonel and his tier five Charisma. Holy shit, that sucked! I remembered the feeling, how he’d had me wanting to follow his every order. And that was with a Will of three. What if I hadn’t socketed a Will stone? He probably could have nicely asked me to turn over all my spare stones, and I’d have done it.

Well, maybe not that far. The sort of control Charisma gave him didn’t seem to allow him to order folks to do things too strongly against their nature. Like, I doubt he could ask someone to kill themselves or something. But if he kept ranking that power up, who knew where it would end?

Regardless, I didn’t want to hang out with the man any more than I had to. He didn’t seem to be using his powers in ways that were double-plus creepy, but even the relatively ‘gentle’ control he’d exerted was more than I wanted to deal with on the regular.

“Maybe sometime,” I told him.

He reached down and patted Hope. “Nice to see a dog here, even if it is a weird one. There aren’t too many canines on the base, and I miss ‘em. To answer your question, where we go next is up to you. I do need to run you through medical, just to get someone with enough Healing crystals to scan you for disease. We can’t risk an outbreak—you being a med student, that must make sense, right?”

“Of course!” Even a minor epidemic would be a nightmare. I wasn’t sure what sort of healing magic they had, and their clinic probably had at least basic supplies. But even with magic, disease could get bad. “Let’s do that first, then.”

Turned out the scan was literally that. Farnsworth took me down to their clinic, where an actual doctor looked me over—with magic, instead of with a stethoscope. He just stared at me, touched my shoulders, and nodded.

“You’re fine. Some signs of recent injuries, but they’re all healed already,” the doctor said. “I’m guessing you have some sort of healing power yourself, or regeneration?”

“Yeah, one of my spells hurts the monster and heals me for part of the damage,” I told him.

“Drain Life?” he asked. When I looked shocked, he chuckled. “There are only so many spells out there, and I like to be familiar with as many of them as possible. That one is common enough that I’ve seen it before. Anyway, you’re cleared. No sign of infectious diseases, and no injuries that need tending.”

I left the clinic, rejoined Farnsworth, and then we were off to our next stop.

“The Colonel told me you’d been interested in seeing the Crystal Exchange,” Farnsworth said. “How about we go there next?”

He wasn’t wrong! The idea of a safe way to exchange stones with others was exciting. I had a feeling eventually trading posts like that were going to be a backbone of our survival. Early days, folks mostly needed to just get a few crystals. Almost anything would do, just to get them started.

Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

But then we needed to rank those up, so we could socket more. To rank the embedded stones, we needed more of the same kind. It was like playing ‘three of a kind,’ but with tons of options, and we needed a lot more than three. Now that I was certain we could reach tier six, I wanted to get there bad. But if it took sixteen of the same stone to reach tier five, it was a good bet tier six was twice that. I’d have to wipe out an entire additional cemetery to get there.

Or I could just go to the exchange and swap some of the ones I wasn’t using for others that I would.

“Yeah, that’s definitely a plan,” I told him.

He led the way, taking me back up toward the admin building. Turned out the exchange was inside, on an upper level. As soon as we came near the exchange, I saw signs of heightened security: soldiers patrolling the halls, a check in desk in the hall, stuff like that. Farnsworth got us past it all pretty well.

“Have you guys had trouble here?” I asked, gesturing at the latest guard as we passed.

“No, and we want to keep it that way. These crystals are probably the most valuable things in the world, right now. Money is worthless. Guns won’t shoot. Missiles won’t fire, and won’t explode even if they did,” Farnsworth said. “Those stones represent power, survival, and a lot more besides. Colonel Turner ordered high levels of security right from the beginning, not because we had people trying to break in, but to dissuade anyone who thought it might be a good idea.”

Then we were there. Farnsworth opened the door and held it for me to pass, and I was inside the Crystal Exchange. An older woman was behind a counter in what amounted to a small room. The whole place looked more like a closet than anything else—a big closet, but still.

There were no windows. The space was well inside the building. With avian adversaries, that made complete sense. The woman was maybe forty, possibly as much as fifty. Her hair was definitely dyed, which made it harder for me to peg her age. I could see her tier as I came closer, though—she was tier four.

“Farnsworth, you old rat! What are you up to today? Got company?” the woman asked. Then she turned to me. “Hello! My name is Maura. How can I help you?”

Farnsworth stepped up to the counter. “Colonel has me escorting the young lady around for the day, and asked me to bring her by. She’s rank five.”

“I’m Selena. Nice to meet you.” I wanted to correct him and say ‘tier’, but didn’t bother. These people wanted to call them ‘ranks’ instead, who was I to correct them?

But it was tiers.

I checked my socketed stones and pulled the nylon zipper-bag from my backpack, fishing through it to remind me of what I had. It was weird, how once I hadn’t been able to tell them apart without using them first—but once I’d absorbed a stone, even briefly, I could always tell what it did.

Now, I was able to do one better. All I had to do was look at a stone and I knew what powers it contained. A cool fringe benefit of tier five.

Magical Stones

Point 1: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Control Undead

Point 1, Outer Ring: Black Stone (Tier 2) - Curse

Point 2: Black Stone (Tier 5) - Animate Dead

Point 2, Outer Ring: Black Stone (Tier 2) - Contagion

Point 3: Black Stone (Tier 4) - Drain Life

Point 4: Clear Stone (Tier 3) - Will

Point 5: Clear Stone (Tier 4) - Agility

Spare Stones

Black: Animate Dead (Tier 2), Augment Undead (Tier 3), Augment Undead, Control Undead (Tier 2), Darkness (Tier 3), Darkness (Tier 2), Drain Life (Tier 2), Harm (Tier 2), Harm, Health to Mana, Heal Undead (Tier 3), Heal Undead, Nightvision (Tier 3), Nightvision, Protection from Undead, Shadow Walk (Tier 2), Shadow Walk

Green: Entangle (Tier 2), Entangle

Clear: Strength (Tier 3), Strength (x2), Agility (Tier 2), Stamina (Tier 2), Stamina, Intellect (Tier 3), Charisma (Tier 2), Charisma, Will (Tier 2), Will

Brown: Weapon Making, Armor Making, Tracking

I had no shortage of stones, but a lot of them were already merged. Time to figure out how they’d handle that. “I have a lot of stones to trade. Colonel Turner said you could help with that, and I am so on board with a swap. From day one I’d been hoping people could set up a safe-ish way to trade these things fairly.”

“Well, we don’t do even trades here, you understand,” Maura said. “Did Colonel Turner explain that?”

I nodded. “He told me it was a three for two deal, for common stones. So I give you three, I get two. And for rare stones, those are worth—I think he said three times as much?” I hadn’t actually forgotten, but I wanted to see how she’d answer.

“That’s exactly right,” she replied. She turned around, poking into a cabinet.“We have a decent collection. I have a lot of brown crystals, but you being a fighter type, I doubt those will interest you much. They’re all crafting and such.”

“What told you I was a fighter?” I asked, curious and a little embarrassed.

“The skeleton dog next to you. The fact that you’ve got a rank five escort, which means you’re dangerous, plus Farnsworth said you were rank five—and nobody gets there without being a warrior. And the look in your eye, too. I’ve been around the block and seen a few things. You’ve got grit, kid. Keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll be okay.”

“Um, thanks?” I said, managing a smile. I wasn’t sure if that was a compliment or not. It felt…like it probably was. “So what other sorts of stones do you have?”

“Aside from the browns, I’ve got a fair number of clear crystals, a few black ones, quite a lot of yellow stones, a handful of red and dark blue, some green ones…”

Too bad there weren’t a lot of black ones, but I guess I couldn’t have everything. Maybe it was time to pick up another color? First I needed to find out more about those other colors, see what they did, what their capabilities were, and then make some decisions.