From what Tercius and the company could see, the beach was entirely surrounded by cliffs, making it effectively a fortress of sorts. All of them searched for a path down, which proved difficult.
Until an idea came to his uncle. Lux used his small light-emitting device to briefly send a signal, and the man on the beach immediately noticed. They saw him light a torch on the fire and then move towards the cliff, where he abruptly disappeared from their view.
Using Mana Sight Tercius followed him, the man moving through what they thought was solid rock. So instead of Mana Sight, he switched to Stone Sight, peering into the cliff below their feet and found a series of tunnels and caves, with one of them leading from the beach to the forest behind them.
Instead of immediately blurting it out, he kept it to himself. After all, their guide was to arrive in less than ten minutes, and it would be weird if they waited for him in front of the entrance. It would indicate a skill of some kind, and he already revealed too much.
While they waited, he thought about how to make Amber more comfortable. While she did not complain while he held her in his hands, she must have gotten uncomfortable over the long hours. The only place he came up with for her to use was his hood. When not in use, the hood hung on his backpack, and he thought that it might look cool if Amber suddenly appeared on his shoulder.
Yet when he placed her there she whimpered and whined right in his ear, making a commotion.
"Alright, alright." he soothed her as he returned her to her previous spot, right near his elbow where she leaned onto his stomach and once more made herself comfortable before Tercius quite rudely woke her up. "Not even a few months old and already bossing me around," he complained in a murmur.
Their guide, whom Tercius thought a man, turned out to be a large woman. Her hair closely cropped, the night light gave her a masculine appearance. "Follow me," she said and turned around. "I can only get you to a village some 5 kilometers north, after that, you will have to manage on your own."
The tunnel entrance was hidden by overgrowth, barely visible even when you stared straight at it. Once inside they went slowly down, following after the silent woman. The caves themselves were quite extensive. In one of them, Tercius saw a colony of bats, all of them grouped at one spot, hanging from the ceiling.
In another he saw mushrooms, growing all over the walls, stalactites, and stalagmites, a veritable underground forest.
"Are these Moi?" he asked the leading woman. Under the light from the torch and the light-emitting device, he observed the wavy pattern on the cap of the fungus and its white color.
"Aye, that they are," she replied. "Quite tasty once you flip them over a fire."
Thinking over what he read of these, his stomach rumbled. "I am just going to pick a few if you don't mind."
"Oh, I don't mind at all, but it's better if I pick them. There are a few other growing here, and most are not for eating if you know what I mean." the woman said.
He noticed that Seliana, Penelope, and Lux sent a weird glance his way. "What? I'm hungry."
"So eat something from your pack." his uncle said.
"But…Uncle, Moi mushrooms are quite tasty from what I read, and look," Tercius said, pointing to the mushrooms. "There are so many here. Just a small bite. A tiny little bite to sate my curiosity."
Lux just shook his head and moved ahead.
***
A party of four listened to the moaning sound with apprehension in their eyes. In the pause between the moans, they would hear words like "So good.", "It's even better than what I imagined.".
"Uncle you must try some of this. You won't believe how good these Moi mushrooms are," said Tercius as he came near the boat, while he licked his fingers. "But we will have to go back and get some more."
"…I will have to pass this time."
"Do you not feed him?" the woman who provided the smuggling service whispered to Lux. "He ate what I made for all five of us."
"I thought that we did."
***
The inhabitants of the village where they were headed, like most working folk, were up with the sun. That constant was not an exception no matter on what side of the world you went to.
These villagers were all quite curious about the travelers that arrived via a small boat to their little village. These travelers rested for a bit, ate, and then they promptly left on their way. Some were pleased to earn a few additional coins from them, others envious that they were not the ones that benefited, yet none of that mattered to the small group of four that made their way north.
"We will find a transport up ahead, either by ship or overland," Lux explained to his tired audience. "It's close to noon, we need five or six more hours if we go through the forest, and then you can rest in Praenae."
The statement was met with a collective groan from footsore travelers, and Lux smiled at them. "Do you know how much a soldier would march? And in what conditions? What we have here is nothing compared to that."
Tercius and Lux arrived in Tripatis on the last day of the eleventh month, and even then the weather had already gotten colder. It was late autumn in the north and now, over a week later, the dark clouds were ominously teasing with a promise of rain. None of them wanted to walk in a heavy downpour, so they marshaled their forces and headed straight into the forest, where Lux indicated.
Penelope and Tercius walked forward, while two meters behind them Lux and Seliana had a conversation.
"Seliana, I have been meaning to ask you something that has been stewing on my mind for a few days now," Lux said.
"Ask away."
"Why the hell did you allow it to get so out of hand?" Lux asked. "I could not ask you when you were in that state, but now, I must. Is there something wrong with your head?"
"…At first it was only the pain, but you know me, pain is… an old friend. Nothing I couldn’t handle. At first, I thought it was from the fumes, sometimes I have to smell to see if it’s the right time for the next ingredient." Seliana said. "And if I am to be completely honest, it was 7 years since my last skill, and I wanted to try to get Keen Nose. My teacher spoke quite highly of the skill."
Lux shook his head in disbelief. "And then?"
"And when I started having to use my brews for pain control I started suspecting something else was going on, but…"
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
"You did not go to check it out?"
"Oh, I tried. There was a healer up the street from me, and he thought that it was merely from exhaustion. I was quite involved with a few time-sensitive experiments at the time, and I did not get a wink of sleep for days. A lot of my money was invested in them… I could not just walk away midway. So weeks went by with me just… drinking potions for energy and against pain… up until they started losing their effect." Seliana said. "A few days later I couldn't leave my bed. My Pen brought healers, but not a single one knew what was plaguing me, yet each charged their fee. And none of those you brought wanted to see me for the pittance I offered, so… That's about it. How much did you pay them?"
Lux gave a small smile. "…Too much and too little."
"I will repay you, that goes without saying," Seliana said with all seriousness.
"Don’t worry about it, consider it a favor from a friend. Instead, craft me one of these miraculous potions I keep hearing about" Lux said teasingly.
"Lux, I know you are joking, but…tell me what happened with that potion. I know what I made. My potion did not do what those healers said that it did, I know that much. It could not do that. Hells, it was not even one of my better ones."
"Let's just say that it had a little kick of something extra, and leave it at that," Lux said after some hesitation. "I can't tell you anything else, so don't ask in vain."
"All right," Seliana said, with a tone of resignation in her voice. Some things could change, yet others remain constant.
"Thank you, for helping me, old friend."
***
Praenae was a larger village, that if you went by its size and population, qualified as a town. Yet since they did not have a wall of their own, that was a prerequisite for being named one, it remained a village. A large one, but a village nonetheless.
They had their docks, just three wooden piers really, but it was more than enough for this community to thrive. A town hall, for the small administrative tasks, a few pubs, and inns, to offer entertainment, ad most of all they had a whole bunch of wooden one-story houses. There were a few exceptions that had the ground floor made of mortared stone, and then the second of wood that Tercius observed.
As Tercius and his company observed the homes and the folks, they in turn, got themselves observed.
Winter was arriving, and these people were preparing for it. Splitting wood and placing furs on every opening to their home, these folks toiled so that they might see the spring arrive in some three months' time. Each winter was always a crucible of sorts, where only those who prepare just enough survive. Do too little, and starve or die of cold. Do too much and risk getting yourself mobbed and possibly killed when people, who did not manage to prepare enough resources to tide them till spring, find out that fact.
Even though it rarely snowed this close to the sea, the cold winds were every bit as dangerous.
Once they settled into a small inn near the docks, his uncle went off in search of some kind of passage, and as ashamed as he was to say it, he and the rest of the party rested their feet.
Seliana was the first to fall asleep on the large bed, Penelope following soon after, and Tercius tried to stay awake, at least until his uncle returned.
For all we know, someone might still be on our tracks. he thought and did a quick scan to see if anyone had an abnormally large Mana signature.
Finding none, other than the silhouette he thought was his uncle, Tercius relaxed a bit. The next thing he knew, someone was nudging him, saying his name over and over again.
"Get up, our boat leaves in an hour." his uncle's voice said. Tercius rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and hissed from the soreness he felt in his upper torso.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"You have all slept over 8 hours, it’s the next day, just before dawn. Get up." Lux commanded.
"If I slept so long, then why do I feel this way?" Tercius heard Seliana complain with a childish tone.
They ate a warm meat stew, that his uncle specially ordered from the cook, and then under the cover of the final hour of the darkness, they left for the pier.
A small boat, around the same dimensions as the barge that Tercius and Lux used from Nurium to Spheros, awaited them. The boat reminded Tercius of a Trireme, with its three pairs of oars and a single mast in the middle.
A crew of six was waiting for them, and the man who was introduced as the vessel's captain welcomed them. He and his men straight away took to rowing the vessel all the way out of the natural harbor that housed Praenae. Only once the vessel got out far enough, and the wind turned in their favor did the captain unfurl the sole sail. His group of four were the sole passengers, as his uncle paid the man to unload a part of his cargo and make room for them.
With the assistance from a southern wind, they made great speed, reaching the port city of Pontus at nightfall of the same day. The port city stood at an approximate third of the nautical journey from Tripatis to Lissea.
It took Lux just under an hour, from when they got off the boat to find a ship that sailed for Lissea. The cabin was built in mind for two passengers, but they managed. Tercius and Lux made themselves comfortable on the floor, while Seliana and Penelope used the bunk beds. Tercius once more had to experience his uncle’s proclivity for aggressive sleep habits. Ultimately he endured as the journey lasted a mere four days from Pontus to Lissea.
In light of recent revelations about his skill problem, the journey provided Tercius enough time to deal with something that he thought was urgent. He used every free moment to get as much Energy as he could.
Tercius also started transferring small amounts of Energy to Amber, who besides seeming more active, showed no other symptoms.
So for three whole days, he sent woven Energy to both Lux and Amber, running himself ragged from the painful process that the process required.
On the last night before they were scheduled to arrive at Lissea, he finally decided to do something about his skill acquisition problem. Spending time in Meditation right before he went to sleep had become something of a habit to Tercius, yet these last few days he used it almost exclusively. As the skill washed away any and all worry, he was left to ponder about his latest quandary.
Since he had no way of learning what exactly stopped him from achieving a new skill, Tercius decided to come to the source, or at least as close as he could, and find out.
Inside the black void, where years ago only he and the wisps existed, now existed a permanent addition. The visual representation of Meditation. Since that time when he first made his way into the skill, and Flu settled on a more permanent basis inside of it, the skill never vanished. In fact, for some reason, he had no way of making the small marble go away.
At first, he thought that it was because of Flu, with the wisp acting as an anchor of sorts the skill became "moored" somewhere inside of him, allowing easy access, yet at the same time fixing it in place somehow.
But for some time now he began to wonder if it was because he was afraid.
Afraid of actually willing it away.
Over the years he was apprehensive of tampering with it, mostly because he feared losing his source of Energy. To this day, the wisps have never repeated the vortex that brought him into the skill, and he did not know if he could do it on his own.
There was also some apprehension about leaving his pseudo-pet. He intellectually knew that the floating wisp had no obvious sentience and that he was probably just a bit silly, but...
The need to learn more about his skills, any information at all, was now increased and he was no longer comfortable leaving things as there were.
There was only one thing he wanted to do before he began.
He entered the skill, the transfer a matter of an instant. One moment he existed in one place, and the other in another.
Flu was floating around in the colored area of Meditation, while Tercius appeared in the same place he previously left from. The only difference between the first time he came here, six years ago, and now was the size of the area that gained color. With each level increase, the area increased, and in the process, the gray fog gained color.
"If you do turn out to have some lick of sentience, and this fails spectacularly or even succeeds, and we never meet again... Then I guess it was my pleasure knowing you," Tercius said looking at the solitary wisp. "I am only sorry I did not manage to free you. If you know of a way to jump skills, now would be a time to use that knowledge."
The wisp just continued making its slow circles around the inner world of the skill with no visible reaction to his words. Tercius turned to the left and was back in the black void of Meditation.
Once more his emotions calmed, and he initiated the plan he came up with quite some time ago. He needed a symbolic gesture of dismissal that he could do with only his body, and one resounded more with him than any other he thought of.
Reaching with what was his hand inside of what was his torso, the two outlines easily sharing the same space in this void like environment, he grabbed the small marble and took it out of the center of himself. Now the small thing stood where his palm was.
The course of action he decided on was what he thought the most prudent. Even if his action failed, the marble would still stay with him. Opening what was supposed to be his mouth he popped the marble inside, then imitated chewing while he pretended to hear glass crunching. He ground the marble into bits, then those bits into the sand and then finally he swallowed the skill that his imaginary teeth ground.
The small marble that represented Meditation was gone.
Tercius was sure that if the skill did not influence his emotions, that he wouldn't be as calm as he was. Both Flu and the source of the Energy that were Flu's chains were in that inner world of the skill.
In his rational mind, he knew that this was for the best. One day he would have to carry on with experiments, and it was better to do it sooner rather than later. Even a small amount of new information could turn out to mean much.
Tercius had thought about this moment much time in the past six years. Once more he was all by himself. What new skill would he try to enter? Would it even work?
He meditated, the thoughts that passed through his mind merely being registered and acknowledged, then they moved on.
Tercius thought about the skill Energy Sight.
He liked the idea of the magnifying glass, and he could already picture it. Every sight skill having a different lens... Yes, this could work. he thought.
So, for Energy Sight, I will have a frame made of... white crystallized Energy, and where the lens was supposed to be, there will be... swirling white mists. he thought. And by looking through the mists, I can observe a previously hidden world.
Picturing the skill was a matter of seconds, a vision in his mind clear. Yet in the black void that was his being, nothing new happened. Minute after minute, hour after hour, he tried time after time.
Up until he felt someone shaking his body, he stayed and pictured the representation of Energy Sight.
Yet nothing happened. The experiment failed and he may have gave up his great advantage for nothing for good. The chance for that to be the case was there, albeit a small one.
Like uncle said, I need to carry on. he thought. Carry on until I succeed, and even then, push forward.