Day 11
—
Name: Phoenix
Attributes: 1 points
Strength: 6 Constitution: 13, Coordination: 13, Mentality: 21, Will: 17, Charisma: 17, Luck: 13
Luck Uses: 1
Hit Points: 14
Magic Pool 31
Heroic Soul Power Stored 1
—
When he awoke, Annirith was still asleep on his arm, which was magically healed. Careful not to jostle her, he looked around the bed, and immediately found Melite lounging at one end, reading the cobalt blue book from his bag. His cowl, cleaned and repaired, was hanging against the wall, which itself was a strange mixture of branches and still green boughs of pine trees, all intertwined to keep the wind out. A throne of copper was placed at the opposite end of the room from the bed, and he could see past the throne to the bathroom where the copper bathing area was from last night. Overhead, glowing flowers and mushrooms cast a soft ambiance over everything. It occurred to him that he was naked in front of what amounted to a queen, and for the second time felt embarrassed by that fact, but as he had nothing to cover himself with he just had to bear with it.
Melite smiled and put down the book, then crawled over to his side. Carefully she shifted Annirith off his arm, then crooked her finger at him as she left the bed itself. Once he followed, she drew a heavy curtain silently closed around the bed. Phoenix contented himself with dressing again, and was delighted to find a pair of knee high boots, craft of what felt like bark and wood but with soft fur on the inside, warm and comfortable.
Melite took a seat on her throne, and on a strange impulse Phoenix knelt in front of her, bowing his head. “I am sorry I have caused so much trouble to your realm, your majesty. And I am extremely grateful for all the aid you have rendered me.” He glanced at his left arm in appreciation for its unblemished state.
“I will not accept your apology, for you have nothing to apologize for. The goblin attack would have happened regardless of your appearance here, and your actions saved many lives, including the rescue and preservation of my Head Maid, who I cherish. I am told you accounted yourself well in the battle, two goblins here and another back at their slave camp. Lalan theirself would be hard pressed to match such a number, and the goblins will be long recruiting and training replacements. We should not see their like for some great while, after a defeat of that magnitude.” Melite’s voice was low but not a whisper, and Phoenix presumed the curtain would act to muffle their words from Annirith still sleeping in the bed. This was clearly Melite’s personal quarters, and another wave of gratitude washed over him as he thought about all that Melite had shared with him.
Raising her hand, palm up, Melite continued “Furthermore, if it was in my power, I would never allow those hags such a prize as a young man.”
Phoenix swallowed at that. “If it was in your power. But…”
She let her hand fall. “But I do not have the power to contest with the hags themselves. Not all of them in any event, and even a Sisters Coven would prove my match.”
“I have to leave. And the sooner the better.” He said it without rancor or bitterness. He had already come to that conclusion yesterday, and the cold calculus of his presence was all too clear to him. Melite looked at him with great sadness however.
“I do not ask this of you because I wish it.” He did not forestall her, she was a queen in her own throne room, it was not his place to interrupt. “I will gift you all the things we give our own male children, when they make the trek to the Free Elves. I would send you guides but we have learned that it is much safer to go alone than in groups, a single boy hiding in the wilderness is almost impossible to find, while a group seems to attract attention in some way. But safer is still not safe. Beyond the mere facts of survival, for you, the hags will have been alerted to your presence. There may be some pursuit, not by the goblins but by some agent or agents of the hags themselves, depending on what forces they have nearby. In this I will help as much as I am able. Lalan will lead a strike force against the goblins. They are greatly weakened by the attack, and if we are careful and lucky, we can inflict still more losses on them and not suffer any ourselves. This may even distract your pursuers.” She paused then, looking in the middle distance, and Phoenix thought it safe for him to comment.
“All of this is above and beyond what I could hope for, but what I lack most is knowledge. I have broached the first shallows of magic, but my ignorance is enough to kill me as anything else. Yet I feel like I have no choice but to rush forward into more magic, to survive. If there is anything you can do to make my ignorance smaller, that may be the best gift of all.”
She smiled at him, in a motherly way, and nodded. “There is wisdom in admitting what you do not know. I suspect if I looked at your panel, I would see you are on the first step of a long road, an apprentice Magus. Your magic differs from most you will find, which draw their powers from the divine or the spiritual. There are none among my people who can teach you.” His disappointment must have been evident. “But, the two books you have will help, and I will add to it a third, that is written in Empyrean and Tul’lian, to aid you.”
His burning questions were running rampant, so he decided to risk one. “Panel. You have one as well? I have many questions on mine, if I showed you…”
She quickly held up both hands, stopping him. “Do not. That is the most private thing you can show someone. WIth knowledge of your panel, many vulnerabilities could be taken advantage of, much harm could be done to you. If you ever choose to show it to someone, know that you are placing great trust in them, and treat it accordingly. Even wives might not show each other their panels. However, if you have a care, and specific questions, I may be able to answer them.”
I know so little everything could be key, but this latest thing, Heroic Soul Power, comes up with nothing.
“I have… stored some Heroic Soul Power. What is it? How can I use it?” He watched her face intently as he spoke, trying to judge if he had said too much. She did not seem surprised by the revelation.
“Of course. What hero fails to run towards great danger?” she laughed at that, then grew a bit more serious. “A heroic soul is your presence in the world of the deities. You might use it to break the limits placed on you by your nature or circumstances, to be stronger than it is possible for a human to be, faster, smarter. Some heroes invest in their bodies, becoming such that even lethal blows are mere nuisances, that heat and cold alike touch them not, thirst or hunger or even time itself. Great boons can be yours. But as with all things, the more you are tied to the world of the deities, the more you are bound by their rules. As you have already seen, you may find yourself running towards conflicts you are ill prepared to handle. You will attract more attention from beings like you, a foot in each world. Beings like myself, or the hags, or spirits, or demons.”
She walked over to him then, resting a hand on his cheek and staring into his eyes. “Your path is even more dangerous now. I had planned to let you rest one more day, but even that day is precious time you may not have. We will gather the supplies we can, and then I will see you along the Ways to the edge of my domain. After that, stay hidden, stay quiet, and make as much haste as you can.”
She moved to the entryway of her rooms then, and gestured to someone outside. Immediately, a great bustle of activity was set off as maids went about preparing for his departure. She then took a book off her shelf, this one more ‘normal’ in the sense that it was bound in leather and had parchment pages, and placed it in the satchel along with the glass book she had been reading and his silver tome.
He was cajoled out into the grove then, to examine the box of supplies that was being put together. The box itself was a plain but well made wooden box, roughly 50 cm high and deep and twice that wide. Half was filled with a bag of what he could only describe as trail mix, dried berries, nuts, seeds, and dehydrated mushrooms. The other half included two bars of soap, an outfit of woven silk-like material, and most importantly a bottle of that healing rose water. Various utensils such as a bone handled copper knife, as well as a pan, pot, and skewers made of copper.
Phoenix was just sitting down to a breakfast of baked bread, cream, and milk when Annirith exited Melites' rooms. She seemed to be holding on to decorum as hard as she could, in front of all the maids and butlers who were around, so when she arrived at his side she merely touched his hand gently and then joined him for breakfast.
“I have to leave after breakfast.” he broached the subject after a few minutes of quietly eating.
“I know. And I understand, I do.” Annirith paused to look at him, those deep black eyes once again inviting him to fall in. “Things should have been different. We should have had more time.” She ate in silence then, occasionally looking at him as if to say more, then looking away again.
Once they were done eating, he stood. The box had clever woven straps that went over his shoulders and crossed to the opposite hip, which held it in place on his back for travel. He slung the bag of books in front to balance things a little, then stamped his feet more firmly into his new boots. He looked at Annirith then, for what felt like the last time.
“Thank you for the boots. Know that I will never forget you, Head Maid Annirith” was what he could manage.
“Goodbye, Magus Phoenix.” she replied, and then flew off into the woods, but not before he saw the trail of tears she was trying to conceal.
Melite arrived then, and silently they entered the woods and what he now understood to be the Ways, transitioning past the woods in moments to arrive at the banks of a river. The waters ran from east to west, wild and rapid here near its source. The pine trees hung back from the bank, as if respecting the change, and instead there were willows, reeds, and light brush.
“I do not know if your Empire has a name for this river. For me it has always been the ‘South-of-Home’. If you follow this towards where the sun sets, you will cross into flat grassy terrain where the forest meets the mountains to the north of here. In those lands reside the Free Elves, whose might is sufficient to contest with hags and demons and Empire all at once. They may not be friends to humans, but neither are they foes, and you will bear my mark. There you might find aid or at least shelter until you can grow stronger.”
“Thank you, Melite, again. For everything.” he said
She shook her head, that air of sadness still clinging to her. “LIke Annirith, I had hoped to see you grow into a wild and powerful ally, here in the heart of the woods. You are destined for strife and power, so I will add this to my parting words. It may come that the path to the Free Elves is closed to you, either by foes or circumstances. If that is the case, cross this river and head as directly south as you can. In a week's time, you should meet another river, larger and wider than this one. Follow it downstream and eventually you should meet with a new place, an outpost of the Empire. They will certainly try to protect you, but I do not know if they even still exist, after what happened to the city in my domain.” She turned to him, then reached out to hold both his hands.
“Should fate and fair lady luck bring you back to my lands, know that you are welcome and I would be pleased to hear tales of your journeys, and drink wine and feast again.”
“I would be honored, Melite, and should I find myself able to repay you your wisdom and generosity, know that I will. Goodbye.”
She disappeared back into the Ways, and he turned to take the first step of his journey.
Day 12
—
Name: Phoenix
Attributes: 1 points
Strength: 6 Constitution: 13, Coordination: 13, Mentality: 21, Will: 17, Charisma: 17, Luck: 13
Boons: Arcane Adept, Perfect Memory, Prodigal Learning, Enhanced Decision Loop, Hero Soul.
Flaws: Poor Grip Strength, Chemical Susceptibility.
Other: Contractual Commitment (Hero Soul)
Heroic Soul Power Stored 1
Magic: Fire, Air, Death, Conjure, Draw, Manipulation, Dismiss
Spells: Conjure Flame, Conjure Light, Conjure Breath, Draw Flame, Draw Breath, Lance of Heat, Death Ward
Skills: Ritual (Worship Arachnae) 23%. Speak Language Tul’Lian 75%. Read and Write Language Tul’Lian 75%, Survival 30%, Meditate 20%, Fists and Feet 23%, Persuasion 25%, Etiquette 24%, Carousing 12%, Magical Theory 42%, Intensity 42%, Duration 42%, Range 39%, Area 24%, Passivity 38%, Magical Targeting 72%, Read and Write Empyrean 20%
Luck Uses: 1
Hit Points: 14
Magic Pool 31
—
The night before, he huddled under the branches of a fir tree, after nearly a full day of peaceful walking, and wished he had a tent of some kind. It seemed that the fae had no problems with sleeping in the elements, or perhaps they just lacked the ability to make portable shelters. He had been distracted by the welter of emotions his departure had engendered, and spent the day bouncing between missing Annirith and Melite, bemoaning his fate, wallowing in self pity, and then pulling himself out of all that black misery to count his blessings.
Today, he was ruminating on his full panel, trying to decide what to do with his new attribute point and the heroic soul power. He walked while he thought, with the river bank relatively easy to traverse, either by walking along the rocky shore or by stepping into the woods nearby to avoid any thickets of brambles or other obstacles.
He hadn’t been able to question Melite as much as he would have liked, for example he still didn’t know why he had experienced mana burn the last time he had resonated with a Glyph. Was there a hidden limit to how many Glyphs you could resonate with, and if so, what was it? He wanted to use the attribute point to increase that limit, if it existed, but what he could determine from limited playing around was that one point in something didn’t seem to do a whole lot, so it would be a long term project to bring it up to something that had a positive effect on him. He couldn’t add to Mentality, that warning about unacceptable risk of personality loss came back up. Setting the attribute aside for now, he started messing around with the Heroic Soul Power. He found that he could drag the point (so to speak) onto an attribute or to his boons. Dragging it onto an attribute seemed to just increase the attribute by one point, which felt… weak. It did, however, allow him to go past the 21 point threshold on his Mentality, which was definitely an option he was considering. The boons were perhaps even more interesting.
—
Enchanted Heart– enchanted by your care, new vistas and modes of thought are opened to you.
Elphyne– enchanted by your stay, the wilds will comfort you as they would a fae.
—
While it was frustrating that he didn’t have hard numbers to match with the descriptions, he was still intrigued. The Elphyne boon might let him ‘rough’ it like the Fae could, a broader range of environments that he would be comfortable and at home with. Enchanted Heart was what attracted him most. Maybe he was still emotional about parting from Annirith, but it felt like his brief time with her had left a mark on him, and that mark was expressed by this boon. Was he being too sentimental, wanting to choose it over something more practical? He didn’t, afterall, know what new vistas and modes of thought really meant.
Would it be better to bank this point for now? He didn’t know if the boons offered would change or expire over time, although given that they seemed tied in some way to his experiences he strongly suspected they would. What he would like to do is spend a day reading the translation book, then the book of Lia, and then see what insights into his magic they offered. Based on that, he could then decide which weaknesses he could cover with magic and which he would be better off shoring up with points. Sadly, his current circumstances did not afford him a day or two to mess around with learning. He was all too slowly reading the translation book, on his brief rest breaks while he ate breakfast or lunch. There was no path to follow, just rough country and woods, which meant he couldn’t be distracted by reading while walking. Especially as he was marching as fast as he could, pushing his body hard to make more kilometers each day and only stopping once darkness made travel too dangerous. Which resulted in him being exhausted by nightfall such that he could do no more than eat and then curl up under a tree. A circumstance that seemed likely to repeat this evening and for many evenings to come.
Decisiveness, right? I think I could do worse than choosing a boon here or there in accordance with my heart and not my mind.
He confirmed the Enchanted Heart, and he immediately felt a new tingle of power flow through his body, pumping in time with his blood. Once he became accustomed to that, nothing obvious jumped out as different. Oh well, it will show up sooner or later I’m sure.
—
Boons: Enchanted Heart
—
His compromise with his brain vice his heart, and being strategic about his choices, was that he decided to bank the attribute point for the time being. Once he had four points worth, and knew more about his magic, he would invest it as needed, but for now he could prosper with what he had.
He amused himself while marching by practicing his spells. It quickly became obvious that the limit of his skill percentages in his magical skills was the same as his Magical Theory skill, so it became a very high priority to increase that when he could. Already his Intensity and Duration were maxed out at that level, and at the rate he learned, Range and Passivity would be maxed in a day or two.
The first oddity he noticed was once the sun set behind the tree line. Usually the shadows got so dark that his rapid jog-walk-jog pace was far too risky, yet this night, he hadn’t noticed the dim light until the sun was fully set. Then, when he finished eating and crawled under another low slung pine tree for the night, while he was tired physically, with his legs deeply complaining about the abuse he was putting them through, his mind was mostly clear. Last night he had fallen asleep like he was knocked out by a hammer, but tonight instead he… drifted. It was very similar to the feeling of attuning to a Glyph, but without any specific insight or direction. Just a feeling of refreshment, contentment, and maybe… oneness.
Day 13
—
Name: Phoenix
Attributes: 1 points
Strength: 6.1 Constitution: 13.1, Coordination: 13, Mentality: 21, Will: 17, Charisma: 17, Luck: 13
Boons: Enchanted Heart
Heroic Soul Power Stored 0 (1 used)
Skills: Range 39%->42%, Passivity 38%->42%, Read and Write Empyrean 20%-25%
Magic Pool 31.3
—
Phoenix sat up after a handful of hours, wide awake but the world was still much too dark to travel.
Enchanted Heart, I suppose? Did I literally enchant my heart, or is it more metaphorical than that? Better low-light vision and sleeping less are both things that seem to fit with being a member of the fae as a species…
Of course, he was still quite unsure exactly what he was. Human, or incarnated angel, now mixed with faerie stuff? Probably as good a guess as any, or so he figured anyway. Then it dawned on him- he literally was sleeping half as much as before, that was a good four or maybe five hours of extra time a day to do things in!
Giddy for that, he almost missed the new changes in his panel. In particular, the advent of decimal values after some of his attributes and Magic Pool. As expected he had maxed out his range and passivity, and even his limited amount of reading had generously increased his Read and Write Empyrean skill. But those decimals were fascinating.
Another facet of the Enchanted Heart? Or is this just me tuning into my abilities more? It is good to know that old fashioned exercise can increase attributes!
Or so he presumed. It would make sense, since he was doing interval training for something like twelve hours a day, although obviously it wasn’t the high intensity sprints that he recalled from his former life, as there was no possibility of maintaining that kind of energy expenditure over the course of day. Still, if every two or three days gave him a tenth of a point in strength and constitution, a full point would develop after three to four weeks, which was well in the realm of possibility for even a normal mortal man like he used to be. It made his decision to not invest his attribute point immediately even more sensible, if he could simply put in some hard work to cover that weakness in strength. Although it did occur to him that failing to maintain certain amounts of activity might cost him strength and constitution points.
He turned then to what to use his sudden influx of time on. He dearly wanted to read the translation book, four hours a night of that might finish it off in a couple days at most, and he could start working on the more interesting book of Lia. He was wary, at least for tonight, of lighting up his little hideaway in order to read. As sensitive as his eyes were, they still couldn’t read black ink in the middle of the night in the black wilderness. But any light he created with his halo would be a beacon that could be seen for tens of kilometers in every direction, and he was attempting to be inconspicuous. Still, there was a waxing crescent moon in the sky, so he gathered his things and poked his head out to look around.
His new eyesight was up to the challenge, with the moonlight resembling those old film filters they used to put on movies to imitate night when it was clearly bright noon when they filmed. Everything was too crisp, the shadows not deep enough, and the upshot of all of this was that he felt like he could make decent time hiking under these conditions. Thus, a plan was formed. He would walk half the night, under cover of darkness, stop for a long breakfast to read in the dawn’s light, resume hiking for most of the day with a shorter break for lunch, then stop at sunset to eat dinner and rest.
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Suiting feet to plan, he began his early march. He did notice considerably more wildlife at night than he had noticed during the day, including a small herd of deer at a distance across the river, as well as skunks, opossums, racoons, owls and the like. Clearly he had been hunting at the wrong time of day before, if such a cacophony was present now in the wee hours. However, he felt no need to actually hunt something, as the mass of trail mix in his box backpack would hold him for one or two weeks easily, and he didn’t want to have to carry some stinking corpse around either.
At dawn, he stopped to eat breakfast and peruse his books. He had the brilliant idea to just leaf through them quickly and memorize each page. He could devote some of his attention during the day's hike to absorbing the contents and really understanding everything, thus doubling up his research time and travel time. This easily got him through the bilingual lesson book that Melite had given him, and the hike was pleasant and the time passed rapidly. No boredom or dwelling on negative thoughts, just concentrating on language theory and enjoying a stroll in the woods next to a bright bubbling stream.
That night he used his cowl as a kind of blind, draped over his head and torso with the book and halo inside, hiding the light but still letting him read, if awkwardly. He was through the translation book, naturally, but now he was translating the pages of the Lia book from Empyrean to Tul’Lia, and doing so without anything to write the result down on. This was proving to be quite challenging, even for his enhanced mental abilities, and thus slow going, but he spent the time necessary to get the whole book memorized before bed that night, so he could work on it while he walked tomorrow.
Day 14
—
Name: Phoenix
Attributes: 1 points
Strength: 6.1 Constitution: 13.1, Coordination: 13, Mentality: 21, Will: 17, Charisma: 17, Luck: 13
Skills: Read and Write Empyrean 25%->65%, Speak Empyrean 0%->13%
Weight: 70 kg -> 69.2 kg
—
Phoenix ‘woke’ (he still referred to it as sleeping and waking, despite the radically different state of consciousness) just after midnight. He supposed another hidden advantage of the dizzy meditative drifting was a distinct lack of nightmares, he couldn’t help but wonder what was more traumatic, the realization that he re-killed someone who worshiped Arachane, or the multiple goblin deaths at his hands.
He spent the time till dawn walking and thinking and avoiding deep thoughts. The Book of Lia was considerably more like a religious text in the classic sense than the Tome of Arachnae, starting off with a creation story (very mystical with talk of oneness and the first division and so forth), then some nice moralizing (don’t lie, cheat, steal, kill, the usual, nothing he disagreed with), and even a quick list of begats, which if he was estimating correctly was over 5000 years of unbroken lineage of the Empress of the Empire of Tul’Lia. That was pretty impressive, 100 generations of female rulers in a single family line dating back to the start of their recorded history. Certainly his Earth had nothing to compare with it. Gave him cause to suspect there might be some slight editing, adopting, and other shenanigans going on behind the scenes, as it stretched credulity to believe that humans, fractious tribal humans, had managed to maintain a civilization unbroken for 5000 years without falling into the most stagnant, corrupt society imaginable or collapsing into intercine warfare and fragmenting into a thousand successor states.
But the real treasures came at the end, which was a list of worship rituals and their magical foundations, perfect for him. Obviously, not being a worshiper of Lia, he couldn’t just apply these effects directly. But by understanding their underpinnings, he could translate them into his own effects, coalescing that broad expanse of his imagined power into concrete possibilities. In theory. He hoped.
The deity Lia, according to her own hype anyway, was associated both metaphorically and literally with the planet slash world that everything was on. She was also the grandmother of every form of life on the planet. She thus owned the Earth Glyph, and was associated with Life and Order. She had quite a few husbands, over the course of time, who fathered her various other gods and goddesses who then ushered in the rest of life on the planet- plants, animals, people of various kinds, spirits, and angels. Her rites therefore heavily revolved around those concepts- the manipulation of Earth, the propagation of Life, and the maintenance of Order. Big proponent of laws, this Lia, of doing things in the right way and following the right path and being in your proper place.
He had to take a step back then, since he felt his emotional response to all of this was interfering with his ability to process the practical knowledge that it contained. He had definitely not been of a religious bent, but it may have been more than that, back on Earth. Agnostic, which was a kind of wishy washy way of saying atheist without some of the baggage that came with that term. Humanists of some breed or type anyway. He could hardly deny the existence of divinity now, having met two of them (at least!) and experienced the power they were capable of, but did their great power and claimed responsibilities demand veneration? It stuck in his craw, admittedly.
It wasn’t like he objected to authority, he was no punk to rebel simply for the sake of rebellion, who gloried in anarchy as a principle and stuck twin middle fingers at the Man. He could bend his stiff neck when it was warranted, as he had demonstrated with Melite. No harm in being polite, possibly great harm in pissing off beings that could squash you like a bug. That seemed practical anyway. But of course, veneration demanded more than rote politeness and acknowledging the realities of disparity in power. Veneration was asking for belief, that you follow without question those rules made by the object of veneration, even in the face of the evidence of your own lying eyes. Aye yes, that was the rub, that was where he got a little heated and wanted to argue with the silent words on those cobalt blue pages.
This book argued two things he could not readily accept. First, that there were ‘things you were just not meant to know’, that you must trust the deities (Lia, in this case) to handle all those things you were not meant to know. Second, because the deities knew better, were better, you could not question their pronouncements, commandments, etcetera. Content yourself with belief, follower, not knowledge or understanding. It is unnecessary to understand.
Maybe he was a little punk, actually.
There were titans of philosophy and religion who had gone over this ground in excruciating detail back on Earth. Back then, he didn’t have anything approaching a mentality of 21, or so he suspected, and so such arguments varied between ‘opaque’ and ‘opaquely tedious’. He really wished now that he had paid more attention back then, or that he could wring more detail out of his hazy memories. Because now, his knee jerk feelings were at war with his greatly expanded mind, and it was frankly bothersome.
It dawned on him that he had actually stopped hiking at some point during this rumination. Frankly, all this amounted to was that he was still human in his brain, whatever the hell was going on with his body, and probably needed to relax a little at some point. He could answer the big questions of life, the universe, and everything after surviving the next couple weeks.
These ruminations burned the rest of the day and he settled down once again for the night. The evening brought with it clouds again, and a misting, spitting drizzle that didn’t quite penetrate the tree cover but was enough to make the air cold, damp, and miserable. What he needed was a tent or other opaque portable shelter, for a number of excellent reasons, and he was going to have to use his magic to make one. And that meant resonating with another Glyph, Earth this time.
He had almost broken through to Earth already, only pulling back because of the mana burn he got last time. But two things had changed since then, the first was he had been healed of that mana burn with rose water, and the second was he had a bottle of healing rose water sitting in his backpack if he really messed up and hurt himself badly. Judging from all the times it had been applied to him, he had roughly six doses strong enough to heal between a third and a half of his hit points each. So, it was time to take some risks. Again. He could almost hear Annirith winding up like a tea kettle in the back of his mind. But it was necessary to push hard in these times when he wasn’t in immediate mortal peril, because as Melite had mentioned, mortal peril was going to be a prominent part of his future life and he could never tell when it was going to appear.
That in mind, he removed the rose water and set it down next to him, firmly against the backpack and the tree trunk so it wouldn’t accidentally spill its precious contents. Then he arranged himself appropriately and dropped into his trance, focusing as much as possible on the earth he was sitting on. He wanted to feel its presence fundamentally, like he had with Fire and Air before, so as his breathing slowed and that dream-like quality overcame him, he let his mind drift into the soil below. His goal was to move it, to form shapes with his mind, walls and a roof, solid and dependable. Some of that resonated with him. Solid, yes, dependable, yes, taking his body into the ground and protecting it, that all resonated. But moving did not. He tried again, imagining just a circular disk of earth, a pedestal he could support something more complicated on. Just a disk, sitting there in front of him. Again he was struggling. A disk made sense, he could feel the call to the stone below, that sense of solidity.
But, creating it, moving it?
That…
Oh dear.
Was.
Oh the mana burn is worse this time!
A.
Way worse!
Lie.
—
Hit Points: 1(14) [natural healing impossible]
Magic Points: 28.3
Mana Burn IV. Serious Damage: Optic Nerve. Serious Damage: Auditory Canals. Serious Damage: Olfactory Nerves. Bleeding II
Impending Loss of LIfe: 4 minutes 33 seconds
—
He actually screamed at that last word, and then choked on the blood from his sinuses. Coughing, he then vomited more blood into the ground in front of him. Something was wrong with his eyes, and an intense ringing blocked all other sounds in his ears except what he presumed was his own whimpering cries. Surprised but grateful that he hadn’t blacked out from the pain, he fumbled until he felt the tree trunk beside him, then grabbed the bottle. Its crystal neck was slick with the blood on his hands, but he was slow and careful about opening it anyway, despite the big bold letters on his panel.
—
Impending Loss of LIfe: 3 minutes 58 seconds
—
He brought the mouth of the bottle to his own, and downed a healthy swig, using both hands to control the shaking his whole body was undergoing.
—
Hit Points: 7(14) [healing, 14 days]
Mana Burn II. Minor Damage: Optic Nerve. Minor Damage: Auditory Canal. Minor Damage: Olfactory Nerve.
—
It took about a minute for the healing to fully take effect, and he sighed in relief as the glaring impending loss of life warning disappeared from his panel. Still a cascade of injuries, so he took another measured swig of rose water.
—
Hit Points: 13(14) [healing, 2 days]
—
For someone so supposedly smart, you are awfully dumb. He chastised himself.
Sealing the bottle up again, he lay down on the ground and sighed, then coughed and sneezed as he tried to get the blood out of his airways. Once everything had calmed down, he just lay there and stared into the darkness above. Covered in his own blood, the memory of pain was still fresh even if almost all the consequences of his recklessness had been erased by magic. Two doses of magic potion gone but not dead at least.
He gently practiced one of the exercises, to see how badly he had damaged his link. Instead of bumps and friction, he had jagged tears and sharp spines, or so it felt. Just drawing magic through his link was a vague feeling that approached pain, and he could sense several magic points ‘leak’ out those tears in the link and be lost.
So I paid for this new power with a lot of extra work on my link, two doses of healing potion, and, you know, screaming pain in the night. Let us hope nothing was close enough to hear any of that. Still, price paid, consequences suffered, etcetera etcetera, let's see what I bought for my sins.
—
Attributes: 1 points
Strength: 6.1 Constitution: 13.1, Coordination: 13, Mentality: 21, Will: 17, Charisma: 17, Luck: 13
Magic: Earth, The Lie. Meld.
—
Three Glyphs! What the hell, all he had reached for was Earth alone! I guess this might explain the severity of his injuries, but why did three Glyphs unlock when he had only wanted one?
Well, until I can find a proper teacher, I think that is all the Glyphs I will be unlocking.
He went to the river, stripped, and did his best to clean off all the blood. He then changed into the silken jumpsuit outfit that Melite had given him. It wasn’t magically warm like the metallic cowl, and it ended at his upper thigh and just past his armpits. And was, well, there was no getting around it, it was extremely skin tight, hugging his body like black body paint. Nothing left to the imagination there. Still, he was in the middle of literally nowhere, so he decided it didn’t matter, hanging his cowl out the back of the box to dry while he… induced a meditative trance-like state for half the night which counted as sleeping for him these days. Maybe he could dream up some hindsight-is-twenty-twenty justification for everything by the time he was done.
Day 15
—
Name: Phoenix
Attributes: 1 points
Strength: 6.2 Constitution: 13.2, Coordination: 13, Mentality: 21, Will: 17, Charisma: 17, Luck: 13
Magic: Earth, The Lie. Meld.
Hit Points: 13(14) [healing, 43 hours]
Contractual Commitment Pending [24 hours]
—
The highlighted contractual commitment was not a welcome sight, flashing up as midnight passed and he withdrew from his trance. Given all the things that had happened to him in the last two weeks, he was quite reluctant to contact Arachnae, like a kid with a bad report card. He knew he couldn’t actually avoid it, which left him simply the choice of when in the next 24 hours he wanted to spend an hour or so getting yelled at. Just yelled at. He hoped.
On top of all that, the weather had degenerated some as he meditated. Blustery, fat drops of water cast the river into a froth, and the thick cover of tree limbs above him was losing the war against the wet. With the cloud cover, there was no moonlight to guide his march, so he felt that his decision was being made for him. Contact Arachnae, get whatever goals and updates she felt he deserved, the work on repairing his link until dawn, then hike through the day. Maybe mix in some spell practice, if his link could stand it, along the way. LIke how to make an umbrella and a tent with magic.
Assume the position, check. Deep breath. Say the ritual words, from memory this time as he didn’t want to light up the night in order to read the Tome. And then just wait to…
“I see from your panel you have been busy.” Her voice filled him suddenly and despite his nervousness at her oncoming reaction to his report, it filled him with a sense of comfort and safety. Oddly, it was a voice this time, not thoughts in his head.
“Yes, the closer your connection to the world of deities you make yourself, the closer we come together. I thought that would be fairly obvious. Now I have a number of questions but why don’t you recount, in your own words, all the things that have happened in the last fourteen days.” Great, she already sounded a bit miffed.
It took him a decent while to go over everything, and he was grateful that she didn’t interrupt. With no facial expression to gauge her reaction with, he just blundered forward as truthfully and completely as he could, without getting bogged down in too many details. His perfect memory was a blessing and a curse here, he could recount things with exacting clarity, but he struggled to cut short going through each and every choice, step, and path along the way, but he did not gloss over anything, even when it was painful or embarrassing. Once he was done, he steeled himself internally for her reply.
“First, you successfully completed the two straight forward goals I gave you last time. In addition, by establishing a reserve in your hero soul, you have strengthened your connection to me as well, which allows me to reward you properly." She seemed awfully calm. But hey, rewards!
—
Attributes: 1->4 points
—
“Some… comments, clarifications, and advice for the future. When I commanded you to concentrate on the element you need most, I had hoped that it was implied that you restrict yourself to one Glyph and one technique. Not, without any instruction, training, or guidance of any kind, stretch to find the outermost boundary of what you can resonate with, and kill yourself doing so!” OK, now she was getting a little shouty.
“I mean, I did have the rose water…” he offered, but she cut him off.
“No, now it’s my turn to talk. As to your second task, while you technically succeeded in surviving the fourteen days as commanded, your very own actions set you up repeatedly to fail, likely in a quite painful and gruesome fashion. It was luck that saved you, more than anything else like forethought, planning, or careful action.” She sounded almost exactly like his mom, and the whole failed report card analogy was becoming painfully accurate.
When she paused, presumably to gather her thoughts and not her breath as she didn’t exactly need to breathe, he decided to essay another attempt.
“Look, it was obvious to me at least that I couldn’t just huddle in your temple eating pine needles and praying you had some kind of plan for me ok? Risks had to be taken, and most of those risks were… calculated.” He kind of ran out of gas there at the end.
“Most, you say, were calculated.” She gave off a wave of disappointment that was palpable. “I blame myself, truly. Melite was supposed to find you, take you to her realm, and watch over you until I could arrange to send you to an Empire outpost. She and I will have a conversation about exactly how she implemented that request, I can assure you. But you were not in any true danger of thirst, starvation or exposure, and while not as comfortable as I would have liked you to be, you would have been safe and most of all, completely unknown to the hags!”
Uh oh. Ok that was his least defensible risk, for certain. Running towards a fight between two minor deities was not exactly a choice he could defend rationally, and she had zeroed in on that weakness and the consequence of it.
“Pay attention Phoenix, because I only will say this once. You represent a considerable investment of my power, in this world. One I can not afford to lose, and do you know why I can’t afford to lose it? Because I am desperate. Things are going extremely badly for the peoples of this world, so badly that within the timespan of one human generation, all sentient life will either be dead or demonic slaves and playthings. Total annihilation. I need you to take this seriously, because it is serious. I will not command you to not take risks, what I want is for you to understand the gravity of the situation we, you and I, are in, and act accordingly. Do you understand that? I am not lecturing you to hear the sound of my own voice or to inflict some kind of sadistic pain on you, I need you on my side about this.” She had gotten quieter towards the end.
“I have no excuse, Arachnae.” He mustered that much up, past the tight feeling of his throat and the sting in his eyes. “Neither can I apologize, because I feel that in a similar situation, only my tactics would differ, not my choice to engage. Can it truly be you mean to have me let people die if I could intervene and save them?”
She was quiet for a bit, letting him regain his composure. Then, softly, she continued. “It will always be your choice. All I ask is you make a clear, conscious choice, after due consideration, and having faced the known consequences of that choice. Not trot off to fight goblins in a robe with two half known combat spells because of some outdated ideas of chivalry and heroism. Your heroic soul will drive you, if you do not take control of it, and it will only get more difficult as it empowers you further. Enough, I will no longer belabor the point, let’s move on.”
“Your primary goal is this: make your way to the Empire outpost as your primary destination, unless that becomes too dangerous, in which case the Free Elves are an acceptable alternate destination. If neither can be reached in reasonable safety, the Dwarven Hold at the base of the mountain called the Stranger is your third destination.” He nodded along to all of this, straightforward enough and already a part of his plan.
“Your secondary goal is to meet with the Witch Tiana, whose home you will find after following the river for three more days at your current pace, then turning north along the edge of the forest and the plains for two more days. She will explain more about this world, help you with learning magic safely, and provide you with what assistance you can find a way to pay for. You can trust her, but she will not act merely out of the goodness of her heart.”
Ok, a little weirder but having someone who might be willing to actually sit and explain some things could be super useful, as he was still quite lost.
“Your final goal is to avoid capture by the hags at any and all costs. I mean that explicitly, it would be better for you to die than for you to fall into their hands, and if that means you take your own life, then do so.”
Well, that's grim. He would just have to do his best to avoid that situation. And the Heroic Soul could still reincarnate him, right?
“Dying and the Heroic Soul, I can still come back, right? All this talk feels very… permanent.” he voiced his concern once he was sure she was done.
“You have not built enough heroic soul power to self-reincarnate. You would end up trapped in the world of deities where I found you, until such time as I could muster the power to help. Power I currently lack. Tiana can explain further. I will part ways on a high note. Despite everything, you exceeded my expectations far beyond what I thought possible, given what I knew of you at the time. We are still working out the boundaries of our relationship, and some missteps on both our parts are to be expected, so do not think I judge you too harshly for what you have done. Continue to do your best, keeping in mind what I said, and things will work out. Try some of your new attribute points on mentality! Until next month, Phoenix.”
“Until next month, your holiness.”
And with that her presence was gone.
He relaxed his shoulders, trying to shake out the tension from them and his neck that he had carried the entire conversation.
I expected more shouting, to be honest. Not one mention of all the people I’ve killed, not even that priest I am so upset about. Does that mean she is ok with it all? Or did she just not have enough time to get into each one of my many sins, and stuck to the highlights? Am I already overthinking all this? Why yes, yes I am.
Still, he had a few more hours till dawn, and a couple fun things to do. The first was to spend those attribute points!
—
Name: Phoenix
Attributes: 4 points
Strength: 6.2 Constitution: 13.2, Coordination: 13, Mentality: 21, Will: 17, Charisma: 17, Luck: 13
—
Arachnae had suggested mentality, and when he bumped it up a point experimentally the warning did not appear. What has changed? Did she do something perhaps? Or is this more of the Enchanted Hearts effect? Still, while he was excited for the possibilities that a mentality of 25 could offer, he held off. This Tiana was being sold as a source of explanations. Might it not be better to wait and get more info before dropping all four points he had?
It was almost physically painful, but he knew that was the right choice. He did spend some time seeing what boons unlocked when he raised each of his abilities. He was a bit surprised when nothing appeared, but then, he had no boon… points? Selections? Available so perhaps they wouldn't until he did.
So he turned to the other fun thing to do, which was to use his new Glyphs in some spells. The last thing he remembered for before his epic self-inflicted death migraine was trying to form a floating earth-disk in front of him, and his suspicion was that accounted for the two extra Glyphs, The Lie, and Meld. Certainly he should have guessed that a floating disk of earth wasn’t exactly Earth, as a mystical proto-idea. When he got into those trances, he tended to just hare off into the wilds of his imagination without much in the way of caution or logic, which might be part of the lesson Arachnae was hinting at during their conversation.
So with this intention, he focused fully on just the surface before him. The idea was to use this as a basis for a variety of other tasks, such as a mobile umbrella, wheelbarrow like tool, shelter, or even a ride. But a floating surface was a fundamental aspect of all these other tasks, so he started there. He recalled all the various aspects of Earth from the Book of Lia that he knew. According to the dogma, the Earth Glyph was literally part of the body of Lia the deity, which might explain why he couldn’t just create it at will- he would be trying to create more of a goddess, likely far outside of his abilities. And again, the floating part was a struggle. Lia loved all of her children and grand-children, and that love brought them closer to her, which was a neat little way of explaining gravity, or so he thought. So now he begins to understand the nature of The Lie. When The Lie melded with Earth, he could contradict both these points. His Illusory Earth was merely a facsimile of the goddesses flesh, and such a thing would not fall under her love, thus would not fall into her bosom. Fabricate a temporary reality, a field of earth in front of him, floating knee high, no not just floating, repelled knee high because of the anathema it represents to the Truth that is the Earth.
A soft sssshhherk opened his eyes, and there before him was a dull black surface, perfectly circular in shape but quite thin, approximately floating knee high in front of him. Cautiously, he put his hand on it- cool and smooth, but not slippery, is shifted down ever so slightly with the weight of his arm. Leaning more on it, he was able to get more than half his weight to rest on it before the disk was forced gently to the ground.
—
Spells: Illusory Earth, Illusory Fire
Magic Pool: 15 (28.3) [respiration, 8.4 hours]
—
Phoenix spent the next couple hours playing around with that surface, forming it into a bubble, then a bubble with an opening so he could kind of walk in the middle of it while protected from the rain and wind, then into a bubble with an opening, and a shelf where he could put his backpack-box. He discovered that the larger it was in area, the more it could hold in terms of weight. And the large area of course limited how long it could last, overall. Moving it required a certain level of concentration, but this was an acceptable price to pay to be dry and warm for the day. He also realized that, due to concentrating on moving it constantly, he had a much better sense of exactly when the duration would run out, and could ‘refresh’ it, so to speak, before the whole thing collapsed and disappeared.
Further, its opacity and other general characteristics of its appearance was a whole other spell, the Illusory Fire. If he omitted the illusory fire aspect, he could save three Magic Pool points, but the surface was completely invisible, and he kept running into it, tripping over it, barking his shins on the edge, and so on. Keeping the Illusory Fire to a base of three points, the appearance of black rock would become more and more translucent as the area it covered increased. This had a whole number of fascinating properties, as he concentrated the image he wanted, he could make alterations in the appearance in terms of color, texture, brightness, and so on. It was unfortunately a slow change, nowhere fast enough for him to camouflage himself on the move, but if he was very still, crouched into a huddle, he could easily cover himself in a bubble that resembled whatever it was that was around him. A handy tool to hide with!
He was quite proud of the result, and by the time dawn came, even though he couldn’t ride it (yet, he promised himself, merely yet), he could walk the rest of the day only burdened with the mental effort of holding the surface into a complicated form and moving it with him, tinted just enough that he could see where it was. With this, he could make his way down river with only the mud to worry about.
This passed the day almost pleasantly, and when night fell he was able to craft a crude shelter out of the bubble. Given that he didn’t need to have it hover above the ground, he thinned it out enough so it would last for twelve hours, molded a covered chimney and a couple air vents, made it completely opaque, stuck a torch- sized flame at one end, and curled up at the other. Perfect little imaginary hut to meditate in! Dry, warm, comfortable, no pointed rocks or spiky needles or anything! His rest that night was the best he had outside of Melite’s bedchambers.