“I’ve been meaning to ask, why are you trying to become ambidextrous?” Bunny’s question lingered, the rabbit watching intently as Liam practiced spell-shaping on the rope-circlet with just his left hand.
“Because if I ever try to cast anything with my right hand, the lightning worms will suck up the mana.” He raised his right hand, pointing towards the wolf that was lying down next to him. “And yes, I know that they’re not worms, and that if I were skilled in mana manipulation, I could just block them out. But I can’t sense mana yet.”
It was orders of magnitude harder than using both hands; it was like trying to juggle with one hand tied behind his back and someone trying to swat his hand away. But it was doing wonders for his dexterity, their trip down the river had given him plenty of time to obsessively practice until he’d almost been able to nail down his first spell-pattern single-handedly.
These past few weeks of travel had been a rather strange mix of relaxing and stressful.
Turtle would be their ride throughout most of the day, but they would stop from time to time. Most of those times had been because Wolf had spotted something weak enough Liam might be able to kill it. And a few times it would be a larger creature she “softened up” for him. Most of the time he’d spend it on one of his projects, the main one had been getting in some one-handed experience with the magical rope-circlet, but he’d also worked on a few upgrades.
The first was the shimmer-chicken feathers, with some help and guidance from the Goddess and her aspects, he’d managed to fashion them into a cloak. It was very eye-catching, like wearing a cape made out of glitter, but he’d found out a nifty little trick: the reason they glittered was because the feathers sucked up mana. If he touched the feathers with his right hand, his guests would suckle the mana up, and the feathers would become semi-translucent, refracting light rather than reflecting it. When applied to the cape as a whole, it was as if someone had applied one large blur-effect on the area with Photoshop.
Maridah had shown him how it was possible, but Liam had yet to figure out how to make it so all the feathers on the cape did that and not just the patch his hand touched.
The second came from the blue scales and fangs of the electro-croc. Liam had fashioned them into “improvised armor,” that is to say, he’d used the knife to carve and poke holes into them and then strap everything onto his clothes as a way to make it improvised armor. The whole ensemble was far cruder, and he felt it gave him a definite “had to improvise while in the jungle” feel to his ensemble, but he was happy with it. Unlike with the cape, the Goddess and her aspects hadn’t involved themselves in the process, and he had the distinct impression they were half-expecting that what he was doing was somehow related to his arm.
Overall, the trip so far had left him feeling… odd. It was like being on a trip where you’re surrounded by well-meaning and far more successful friends. There was that constant feeling that they were trying to hold back from coddling him, that all he needed to do was ask and they’d do whatever he was trying to do a hundred times better.
In a way, he was thankful Maridah had kept to her animal form; it made it easier for him to continue separating the Goddess he was traveling with from the one he’d written. In Liam’s mind, Maridah had been a partial analogue of Matilda, a ghost holding her image and all the mannerisms.
“Do you know how long it takes a human before they can cast their first proper spell?” Maridah’s voice snapped him out of his thoughts, the Goddess-in-wolf-form just glaring at him.
She was using a language he failed to recognize. She’d been moody as of late, not that Liam was entirely sure why, besides expanding the number of tongues he had access to. His current suspicions were that it had something to do with how smug Bunny appeared to be every other minute of the day.
"Three years," he answered immediately, feeling the blessing kicking into gear to feed him words from the language. "At a leisure rate."
Before, when the blessing activated was random, and Liam could never be sure if it was going off or not. But ever since he got his guests, he could get the vague sense of a tingling coursing up and down his spine.
"You're trying to rush that which cannot be rushed. With the blessing and that arm, it should take you no less than a decade."
That wasn't going to fly for Liam, but he wasn't going to openly disagree with the expert either. Maybe he'd be able to shave it down to half if he kept the high pace, and there were other ways to cut that time shorter… but that was a bridge he'd cross when the chance presented itself.
Right now, there were more important things to focus on. Mainly, that they'd reached their destination. Or at least he guessed it was the case, seeing the thick fog that had descended onto the area.
"It was not like this the last time I came to observe them. There's something foul in the mana… it's recent."
The fishing village of Torum existed at the lip of one of the dozen or so rivers that crossed the Twilight Jungle.
"Then we didn't show up for nothing," Liam declared with a grin. "While I go there with Bunny, I'd need you to look around. There should be a sailship tucked away from the village, nothing big, but definitely larger than anything you'll find over here."
"Someone new to the village is causing this, then?"
"Pretty much," he hopped off Turtle and onto moist land. The dirt was muddy under his boots. "Just keep your distance, wouldn't want people to spot the… you know."
His eyes trailed over to the wooden box atop Turtle. It was roughly the dimensions of a coffin, and it would've looked normal if not because light and sound seemed to bend and twist around it. Even while contained within several layers of God-tier improvised protection, even when Maridah herself was in such a weakened state compared to other deities, her relic still felt like it could drive someone mad if you looked at it for too long. Technically speaking, just being near the thing should've been far harder, but he'd found the weird soundless screeching that gouged at the back of the mind was easy to tune out. It was sort of like a white noise generator, except the noise was directly in his thoughts. If anything, being near the relic made focusing on repetitive mindless practice easier.
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"My safety is not the one I'm concerned about," she frowned. "Are you certain this… person you seek is not tied to a grander fate?"
Liam grimaced a little, his smile nervously awkward. "This place's fate is pretty self-contained, no one's meant to get out alive."
"Well, that's ominous," Bunny declared from her perch on his shoulder.
"No worries, it can be contained if you know the trick," he waved it off. "One of those old forgotten things that were made by assholes who didn't bother to consider the consequences of their actions."
He didn’t notice the odd look shared by Maridah and Bunny as he waved a quick goodbye.
His focus was mostly on the fog as he moved towards the village. The place had probably close to a hundred structures or so, each one a single-story house built out of wood standing on stilts. It would've had a lovely quaint feel to it, perhaps akin to some agglomeration of Caribbean shacks, if not for the heavy fog that clung to it like some unwelcome guest.
With Bunny perched on his shoulder, he pushed closer until he spotted the first villager, a pair of volars working on a net. The volars held the same humanoid shape, but their skin was covered in very thin blue shimmering scales, their heads were a mix between reptilian and that of a fish, with fins at either side of theirs, and their eyes were closer to those of a fish, devoid of sclera and just a silver iris and a rather large pupil.
It was cute in a creepy kind of way.
“Hello there,” Liam called out in Caliphate-common, stopping once they’d gotten close enough to draw the duo’s attention. He gave a slight wave at them, keeping his posture relaxed, hand on the hilt of the forget-me-blade. “Tavern?” He made a slow gesture of taking an invisible drink.
The two pointed deeper into the village without saying a word.
“Thanks!” Reaching into his pouch, he pulled out one of the shimmer-chicken feathers he had to spare and left it atop the soil before continuing on his way. Behind him, the duo began arguing over who would keep the feather, and Liam listened in, waiting a few seconds for the blessing to kick in and the words to start making sense.
Muttering words in this new tongue as he continued so that he could properly grasp it, he ignored the way the locals were coming out to stare. They kept their distance, only taking furtive glances from open doors or windows, never quite talking with one another loud enough for him to catch anything.
The tavern, as a building, was nothing special compared to the rest. Just another wooden structure on stilts, just slightly larger than the rest. Walking up the steps and inside, he was welcomed by warm air and what looked like a very large and very busy rustic kitchen. There was no chimney to speak of, only a gathering of stones held over metal stilts above which the fire simmered beneath a large cauldron that smelled of all things fishy. There were chairs all over the place, most of them occupied by volars of varying ages, engaged in their supper.
The room became dead quiet the instant Liam stepped in.
Reaching into his bag, he pulled out three palm-sized electric blue scales. “Crobo scales,” he declared, taking a moment to seek out the volar wearing an apron. He couldn’t tell whether they were male or female, but the way they glanced at him in interest was unmistakable. “Food and drink, please,” Liam added, still using Caliphate-common.
The owner gave a quick nod, picking up a wooden bowl and filling it from the cauldron’s contents. Then filling another bowl with water from one of the barrels from the far wall. They then took the three scales, giving them a quick look over, their expression unreadable thanks to the lack of brows or lips. “You hunt this?” He used a bastardized form of the same language, one carrying a very thick accent.
“Got stranded, followed the river. What is this place called?”
“Torum.” The owner paused, glancing at the scales again. “If you need a place to rest…”
In such a small village, the tavern wasn’t really meant to be a place for strangers to stay the night, only for the locals to have somewhere to gather and socialize. Stuff that worked like a hotel, with rented beds, was only really common in the more heavily trafficked cities. If Liam were looking to spend the night, it would’ve been customary for him to go around and ask for someone to share their abode. At worst, he just might ask to sleep in one of the boats.
He didn’t have plans to stick around that long, but no doubt the offer was coming out of someone wanting him to pay with more scales. A monster’s parts were very valuable to isolated places like this one.
“I appreciate the offer, but I need to deliver an important message. What’s the quickest way to the nearest trade settlement?”
They nodded once. “The road, north of here. Just follow the shore.” His gaze lingered on Bunny, perched as she was on his shoulder, but then went back to his own meal.
“Thanks.”
Finding a stool to sit on, leaving the water bowl on the floor, he quietly stared at the fish broth. This was what some people would call “forever soup”, a cauldron that was kept permanently at near boiling temperature and would have the cook dump in ingredients and water as needed. In some places, such a thing could literally be centuries old.
But his hesitation wasn’t any disgust; far from it, Liam’s mouth was watering from the smell alone. No, it was a sense of… something else. These past… two months? Three? Spent in the jungle had been a constant “survival,” with meals always consisting of either raw fruits and veggies picked about the place or half-burnt things cooked over the fire.
Granted, Liam had the Blessed-Iron-Skillet, but he’d been focusing on just keeping himself fed enough to get to the next meal.
Staring at what was the first properly cooked meal since the Barb, Liam felt something stirring inside him. Fingers gripping the wooden bowl as a deep sadness swept over him like a storm. “I’m homesick,” he realized, whispering the words in English, the first time he’d actually verbalized anything in his native tongue in recent memory.
Liam drew in a shuddering breath, calming himself before taking a taste of the soup as he composed his thoughts. The meal was salty and not particularly to his tastes, but it was a simple, enjoyable thing, something to keep him grounded as his mind wandered.
Back then, he’d jumped into the portal without a second thought; looking back, he hadn’t been in the best of places emotionally at the time. He didn’t regret coming here, but... But now that he thought about it, he did wish he could’ve left something behind, something to tell his family he was doing well.
As far as he knew, that wasn’t a possibility anymore, which was a bit of a hard pill to swallow.
Something brushed against the side of his head, on his shoulder, Bunny had leaned closer and rubbed her fuzzy forehead against him. “Thanks,” he reached up to scratch her chin.
Tuning out his thoughts, he tried to focus on the conversations around him. The locals spoke amongst themselves in their local tongue, thinking their words safe from the stranger’s prying ears. But Liam paid attention, looking for something in particular. Though most of the conversations were mundane and wondering how he’d survived the Twilight jungle, a few of them had mentioned how some of the local fishermen had strangely not come back.
Liam nodded along; it seemed like things had only started.
Finishing his meal and beverage, he handed the bowls back and thanked the owner before stepping outside.
“You know the thing about horror mysteries? They only really work that way if you don’t know what’s going on,” he spoke with a slight grin, petting Bunny as he began walking towards the north of the village, following the coastline.
“And what’s the mystery?” she asked, clearly certain none other was close enough to hear them.
“What’s going on is that someone brought something dangerous to this idyllic little village,” Liam’s expression hardened. “So we’re going to go clean the mess and grab some trinkets along the way.”