Curious about exactly what I might be able to achieve, I head a decently long ways south of the temporary camp. I reconfigure my walking stick and various fangs into something I imagine would work like an axe, and I begin chopping down my first tree, the thinnest one I can find, which is still several feet in girth. After what seems like hours, I feel as if I’ve barely made a dent past the tree’s bark, and running my hand along the groove I’ve carved, I find my assumption to be correct. I know I can throw a radiant spear through a tree, I’ve done that before, but I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to control the tree’s descent, and might end up injuring myself. Then again perhaps I could angle the spear toss from above, downward at an angle, and the tree would fall away? At least, if I stand on the far side from where I had been chopping. Sweating, panting, and leaning against the tree that I’d been swinging at for hours, I hear some snickering from nearby. I panic and spin around quickly, hefting my axe, my back pressed against the tree, my heart racing.
I feel a familiar palm touch my hand, keeping me from reactively swinging, as Te laughingly tells me “Give me that, you goober, you’re going to hurt yourself.” Her voice all atwinkle to my ears, metaphorically at least.
Trying to hide my exhaustion and temporary fright, and curious what Teuila is doing down here, I ask, “Te? Are you done training for the day?”
Teuila responds with pride, oddly directed at me, “Yes it’s me, yes I am. It seems like you’re training too, in your own way.”
I rub the back of my skull while blushing as I mutter, “Well, less training, more trying to do something to prove a theory.”
Innocently enough, Te asks, “What’s the theory?”
I have to give an honest answer, “I’m not entirely sure, yet.”
Avoiding eye contact, even though I'm sightless, I can feel Teuila grinning like a loon as she teases me, “Isn’t that the same as not having a theory?”
I pause deliberately, and mumble “...Shut up.” I laugh immediately after though, as I squeeze Te’s hand. “So I wanted to collect lumber, and see what I could do with it, without using inventory magic to just claim a tree right out of the ground, but it’s proving to be way too difficult for my little arms.”
I hear Te make a tsk sound as she hefts my makeshift axe before giving the tree a mighty thwack. The sound reverberates, or maybe Te shakes, so hard from the impact that I actually wobble for a moment. “It would take a lot of chopping to get through one of these.” She states plainly.
I sigh, I’d figured as much, but wanted to accomplish something on my own anyway. “Te, can you chop a small notch really low on one side, and a small notch higher on the other side? Make sure that the high notch is towards camp, and the lower one is away from camp.”
Her question is unsurprising, though a tad funny to me, “Just what are you up to?”
“I’m going to try to magic my way through the rest of the trunk.” I can feel Te’s gaze become stern as if she’s peering into me to suss out my intent, as if she doesn’t quite believe something about what I’ve said. I’m not sure what doesn’t seem exactly as I said it, maybe she thinks I can’t do it yet since I haven’t shown off much magic since the tidal wave. Somehow I can think about the tidal wave night with sadness, but not a full blown panic attack, yet other things in my memory, well, they don’t bear thinking about. I guess I was quite possibly in my formative moments, I may have literally just hatched from an egg at that time. My pulse races as my thoughts edge towards that early time, but I try to still my breathing and squeeze Te’s shoulder.
Te, for her part, obliges, maybe to show off how strong she is compared to me, after a few minutes of chopping, she made more progress than I had made in hours, enough to accomplish what I want to try next. “Te, you’re amazing, thank you, make sure to stand closer to camp, and don’t stand parallel to the line between the notches you cut, in case I get this wrong.”
She half-snarks at me, “You really think you’re going to take the tree down the rest of the way?”
“I know I am.” Okay, that probably sounded way cockier than I intended it, but it’s true, I have the energy capacity to make radiant copies again, and to eject objects from my inventory. If I configure my spear to have a bunch of teeth on one edge, like a saw blade, and imagine it spinning rapidly, I should be able to chop it down the rest of the way in one go. First I need to make sure that I know exactly where I’m going to send the sawblade, so I walk around the trunk several times, gauging exactly where the notches are. Once I’m certain of the angle I need to hit between the two, I imagine summoning a spinning bladed copy of my spear from my inventory, above the notches, expelling downward at an angle, making sure I’ve got as close to the exact position in my mind as I can possibly get. I summon a wedge of baked clay to put in the top notch, hoping to help persuade the tree to fall away, then I stand next to Te.
I plea for Teuila's protection and safety with a request, “Brace yourself, I might need you to dive us to the side if I screw this up.”
“You’re the most reckless being in existence, I’m sure of it. Made yourself blind, burned yourself to a crisp, nearly died to save one of us, now you might squash us both flat with a tree? If I couldn’t read you as well as I can, I’d think you were some kind of thrill-seeker. Go on, I’ve got you, dingus.” I feel Te’s firm grip on my shoulders, and I can tell her haunches are bunched to leap us any direction that might be safest. Feeling comforted, content, and safe in her grasp, I summon the blade at the position I’d imagined before, expelling it with as much spin as I can muster, hoping that it either strikes with the head, with as much force as the one time I was testing, or that it saws through the tree.
Instantly, we’re greeted with the sound of wood tearing, and a massive crack as the rest of the tree separates from the remaining trunk on the ground. I almost feel bad for taking the first tree that might ever have been intentionally felled in this place. An instant later, after several crashing sounds while the falling tree plowed its way to the ground, a massive earthshaking thud welcomes us to the end of its descent. I’m fairly certain between the sound, and the tremor, our activities can probably be perceived all the way back at camp. I jog towards the stump to lay my hands upon it, whispering a quiet apology and thanks to the nature that brought the tree into existence. Even though trees are living things, it doesn’t seem to derezz either the trunk, or the lumber.
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Walking the length of the fallen log, there’s a massive quantity of material available for me now, the biggest load of vines and cypress needles and branches I’ve yet been able to acquire. I don’t count the time that I was nearly dead, stuck in limit break, sucking up nearby trees to try to make a log raft. All of that material disappeared in the limit break finisher. I sort of wish I had done this back near my pond home, because the trees there have those amazing leaves that are like leather. The needles here don’t interest me as much, though I’m surprised there are none scattered about the swamp floor, nature doesn’t quite make sense to me here, so many things are in a perpetual state of not-decay. Actually, I take it back, about the needles not interesting me as much. They’re nearly as hard as stone, though a tad brittle, if we’re careful, we could use them as nails, or actual needles.
Te seems to be watching me with bemusement, as if she were slightly impressed but unwilling to admit it. I struggle to claim the whole tree to my inventory, but eventually the log is separated from its branches, and claimed to my inventory in chunks, when it is, I turn to Te, completely exhausted, panting and sweating.
“What, even magic is too much effort for you right now? Poor little dweeb.” Te taunts me, in her sweet tone of voice that’s meant to be an endearing fashion, but it actually stings slightly, as I am really spent, and just want to be helped back to camp. When I can’t respond to the teasing, Te seems to realize she hit a little too hard at the moment. Just as I’m about to topple over, in what feels like slow motion, I can sense Te drop her mocking stance to rush over to me. She swings one of my arms across her shoulders to help keep me standing.
“I’m, huff, getting, huff, better, phewww.” I try to explain to Teuila between panting and gasping for breath.
“Right, sure you are, easy does it, now, don’t overdo it. You promised not to get hurt, remember?”
“I, huff, know, phew, I’ll, phooph, be, hufff, good.” I manage to pant out in reply. I realize the ringing in my ears that’s ever present, is close to the loudest it had ever been, causing my head to swim slightly. If I’m exerting myself this much, maybe I’m making progress towards breaking the lock on my energy capacity.
We walk back to camp together, finding time to idly chat as I finally catch my wind. Te’s excited that she has been able to catch more air with the winged cloak from Vampguppy’s dorsal fin, so she proudly boasts of the height, in a way that insinuates how grateful she is for the presents I’ve given her. Of course, being Te, she has trouble admitting depth to her feelings, while mine are on complete display, as I’m so proud of her and enamored of her. Te, curious about the material, asks me about it. I don’t recall if Lil or I had shared with her the tale of the Vampguppy fight, so I recount it in vivid detail, trying not to embellish at all. I don’t want to come off as trying to sound heroic, it was stupid of myself to not run immediately when Lil and I saw the kind of danger we were in. We were ill prepared, and got lucky, even with our luck I still barely made it out, and would have actually drowned if Lil wasn’t there to fish me out after I passed out.
Once we’ve broached the topic, I start to share all of my fights, with pauses for panic and flashbacks, how I basically lost and ran from the first encounter, won and walked away from the second, lost by diving into the river on the third encounter, accidentally won on the opposite riverbank during its fourth assault, basically I’m pretty sure I had four skirmishes with the same sphere on… Day… One... I talk about how even fishing was dangerous at first, the caves and cliffs, spotting Lil for the first time, leaving them some food. I gloss over Vampguppy since we just talked about it, then I share how Lil and I couldn’t beat the feathered bear. I recount how we drove away some Bully Frogs when we were about to meet Staff Ninja, the creature with the harmonious nature with the elements of thunder and lightning, then everything changed when the swamp serpent attacked. From then until we met the Shellcrackers we’d mostly just floated downstream.
Te and I bond, like every conversation was our first. Even if I’d already told her the tales of woes that were my various adventures til now, she listens raptly, rarely chiming in except to chastise me for getting hurt, or express pride in my successes. When we arrive back at camp, it seems the noise of timber crashing alerted the rest of the family, as everyone is gathered. As much as I’d like to go take a short nap, I figure this is the best time to approach everyone about heading home.
“What in all good graces happened out there? We thought for sure a tsunami had struck without warning and was snapping trees but there was only the sound of one.” Ag questions in a serious tone, demanding a response.
“We were, well I was, working on felling a tree for lumber, building materials, I couldn’t really do it until Te showed up, we chopped it down away from the camp.” I produce chunks of log from my inventory as proof while I continue explaining. “I want us to be able to have the safest possible places to stay, and I want to share something with all of you.” I’m about to explain what I want to share before I get cut off by Lao.
“Child, you’ve shared much of yourself already, you need not push yourself. You are still injured in ways that may never heal.” I can feel Lao’s soft furred hand as she strokes my cheek, looking through Lil’s eyes and listening through Lil’s senses, I can tell how forlorn Lao really is. I’m not sure if she’s saddened that I’m hurt, or still grieving, or any other combination of emotions.
“Oh, thank you, sorry though, I wasn’t finished with what I want to share. There’s a place up-river, a pond that I was living at, alone, until Lil showed up. The fishing is plentiful, it’s near a cliff face, along which are caverns. It just feels like, if we’re going to be inland, we could maybe, possibly, share the best place I’d found to live? The journey would be hard, because there are dangers in the swamp, but we’re already in danger living within its boundaries and frequently heading within. The serpent there, or serpents, if there are more than one, was so powerful. Lil and I have a somewhat safe way to at least rest during the journey, right Lil?”
Lil takes a moment to realize I'd called on them for affirmation before excitedly confirming, “Oh yeah, we can bake a little hidey hole in the mud under a tree, it makes a really cozy little cave to snuggle up in for a sleep!”
I try to gather my thoughts, and end up rambling as I press towards what I hope is a group conclusion, “So, um, what does everyone think? I think the further inland we are, as well as the further away from the swamp, the safer the whole family will be, and, and, um, when we make it back, I want to build for all of you. Oh, and on the way back, there are beavers, who said they’d be friends with us, or well at least consider being friends with us, if and only if we proved to be friends of other aquatic types. There’s also another danger, but that one is miniscule based on what we’ve overcome so far, a big bear thing, that I think Lil, or Te, or myself could drive away or strike down, now.”
Ag had been in the process of forming a response when I mentioned Te could drive off or strike down a bear, when their aura looks visibly perturbed through Lil’s senses, and they seem on the verge of hitting something, as they shout, “Share with us, you want to share with us, and want our safety, yet you would ask Teuila, whom you seem to care so much about, to risk herself in battle!? Something you, with all your vaunted magics, apparently could not defeat prior to you nearly ending your own life and losing much of what power you had!?”