Day 5
—
Name: Phoenix
Attributes: 0 points
Strength: 5(6) Constitution: 12(13), Coordination: 12(13), Mentality: 20(21), Will: 17, Charisma: 17, Luck: 13
Skills: Persuasion 0%-> 22%, Etiquette 0%->24%, Carousing 0%->12%, Magical Theory 0%->36%
Luck Uses: 0 [1 use recharging, 1 hour remaining]
Toxin Buildup I, Chemical Sensitivity Response I
—
Phoenix just lay there. It was becoming quite the thing for him to wake up feeling like utter crap, and frankly he was getting just a little tired of the whole ordeal. As long as he didn’t move, breathe, or open his eyes, the hangover was bearable. Barely. How, he wondered, did this fit in with not coming to any harm under her protection, exactly!
A gentle, cool hand caressed his cheek, drawing him out of his self pity. “Magus, breakfast is here.” Annirith’s voice was the same, cool but gentle, pitched low to not upset his headache.
“Good morning, Head Maid Annirith.” He croaked out. “I hope I didn’t cause any embarrassment last night.”
“Of course not, Magus, although I believe her majesty had been hoping for a dance at some point in the evening, However overall she seemed quite pleased.” He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. A dance? He should be thankful he avoided that debacle!
Once he dared to open his eyes, he found himself in what amounted to a large bird's nest, carefully constructed from dead branches, rather high up in the boughs of one of the trees near the meadow. Dawn’s light lanced through the tops of the trees, filtering down to him and making his sensitive eyes squint. The soft whisper of voices and buzz of wings were a distant accompaniment to the birdsong. He tried not to wish death on the birds, objectively, but it was proving difficult. Annirith, as precise and proper as always, set a plate of berries and creme, along with another jug of that honey tea, next to him. She then backed to the edge of the nest.
“When you have broken your fast, I will return and guide you back to the city.” she then flew off into the darkness below.
Back to the city, ah well. He had hoped to stay perhaps, and enjoy the free food and comfortable place to sleep, but that was pushing the boundaries of Melite’s generosity a bit too far he supposed. Happy to find the silver tome tucked into the nest beside him, he read and ate, while a section of his mind pondered the future. He could remember clearly all the berries, leafy greens, and mushrooms he had eaten so far, so perhaps a bit of foraging would turn up sustainable amounts of food once he was back. I wonder if it is some kind of worship or spiritual thing for Melite, she had been peculiarly emphatic about every denizen of her forest fighting for their own survival. If she was a deity, perhaps that had something to do with her Glyphs? An interesting question but of only theoretical use, at least right now. Judging by the strawberries and such in his meal, it was late spring, which also explained the cool weather. If he could unlock the Earth and Water Glyphs in addition to Fire and Air, he could use them to perhaps plant crops? Did he want to remain here that long? No, that was getting ahead of himself for certain, as Arachnae could redirect him at their next meeting. Concentrate on improving his magic, and try not to miss the comforts of this court too much.
He wasn’t looking forward to returning, but regardless he had had several good meals, a night’s sleep, and a decent party, so he wouldn’t complain. The meal nearly miraculously cured his hangover while it filled his belly, so it was with much improved mood that he got up again. He looked over the edge of the nest, and realized just how high up he was. How the heck did they get me up here? Catching sight of Annirith, he waved and she darted up to be level with him.
“All done, Magus?” She seemed awfully chipper, even somewhat relaxed, especially in comparison to yesterday's behavior. When he nodded, she held out her hand for him to take, and then he felt that strange heavy feeling again. Divine magic? Feels different from my magic. They easily floated down to the ground, then blurred along the pathways and through the trees for a few moments before arriving with a heart skipping stop at the edge of the canal. Annirith extricated her hand, and hovered there, watching him with an unreadable expression. After a few uncomfortable seconds, he broke the silence.
“Well, I am sorry I didn’t get to say a proper goodbye to Melite, but I am sure she is busy,” he said.
“Yes, Magus.” She continued to watch him.
“Is there something I can help you with, Head Maid Annirith?” best to just brave the front gate, right?
“You are interesting. I want to meet and talk again, Magus. If you wouldn’t mind.” she turned her head away then, for all the world acting like she was shy!
“Of course, Head Maid Annirith, I would be delighted if we could meet and talk. I, uh, have no way to contact you, but if you show up I am sure I can make time for you?” a bit of an optimistic promise, but why the heck not, he would figure out how to entertain. Somehow.
She immediately produced a small flower, held straight armed out towards him. Delicately, he accepted it, cupping it in his palm to avoid any accidental damage. The sweet scent, prominent pistil, and sharply curved petals reminded him of a honey suckle, except that it was purple with a white center. A local variant, possibly. It seemed she had been planning on this, so he smiled at her and said. “Thank you, Head Maid.”
“Speak my name into that flower, and I will hear it and if I am not busy, I will come.” She tried to sound indifferent. “But expect me to come! Don’t call me if you are going to just send me back because you are busy! That would be rude!” She shook her finger at him, then suddenly. “Magus.” she added, belatedly.
“Of course, Head Maid. I understand. Thank you again.”
With a sharp nod, she turned, and he witnessed what it looked like for that magic to work- a shimmer of the air and then a bright accelerating streak of light that bolted into the woods, nearly immediately disappearing into the distance.
Feeling oddly let down and abandoned, back here at this rather primitive ruin when he had seen the wonders of Melite’s court, he sat at the edge of the canal for a few minutes, just letting the feelings wash through him. Ok, enough moping. For now anyway. Chores first, then study the book. With enough magic I can make this place pretty nice I think.
He stalked into the woods, on a mission, his perfect memory giving him a clear picture of the foods he had eaten. Building a mental map of his surroundings was made trivial, limiting the possibility of getting lost as long as he paid proper attention to his surroundings, and he was able to quarter the grounds around the temple efficiently, without backtracking or covering the same ground twice. After a morning's worth of effort, he found a bunch of strawberries, blueberry bushes, and several fallen trees with a variety of edible mushrooms. It was clearly too early in the season for the blueberries, but the strawberries were ripe and the foxes and birds hadn’t attacked all of them yet. Along with the mushrooms, it made for a decent couple meals worth, carried in his hiked up cowl which made a kind of apron like bag for him to deposit the harvest.
Returning to his campsite, which remained untouched despite his absence, he deposited the food. Then, steeling his nerve, he returned to the stairs and the room below, carefully examining all the bodies which thankfully remained inanimate. He collected whatever metal wasn’t entirely rusted or corroded, and even found a silver bowl hidden behind the altar! This cheered him up considerably, as it greatly aided the process of getting safe water. Followed then by more wood gathering, where he was starting to have to range even further out to collect fallen branches, it was midafternoon by the time he was done with all the projects needed for survival and he could devote his time to study.
If each of these Glyphs was going to cost him Magic Pool, he might start having to be strategic about what he opened up, at least in the short term. Going back over his needs, he was still dissatisfied with the fire burst he could conjure. Even if it continued to get larger and hotter with further practice, which he felt was likely, its range was short and its casting time, for lack of a better term, was long. As an offensive spell, it felt inadequate. Air had a similar set of problems as an offensive Glyph, he could draw the air away from a place but it wasn’t fast, and was replaced by the surrounding atmosphere. He might, conceivably with practice, suffocate something by using Draw Breath from their lungs, but the issue of speed and range were still there.
What he needed was directed energy. Could he somehow project existing fire, like a flamethrower? The tome had some rules that could be used to predict certain aspects of spells. These were of a form like his grade school logic puzzles. Strength, range, duration, Magic Pool cost, concentration length, and casting time, all with various logical rules for their interactions with each other, but the tome did not go into any detail about these rules, instead saying that the divine gift and resulting Glyph Pool was superior in every way. Certainly, the baseline description of some of the divine spells sounded impressive, being two to four times more powerful, two or three times longer in duration, sixteen times longer ranged, and cast with but a thought or word. But reading between the lines, it was clear to him that the divine spells had their limits as well. For example, what you received from the deity was what you had to use, each time, and could not be altered at whim if the circumstances demanded. Inflexible, but strong.
He had a pair of spells that were easy to test, namely Conjure Flame and Conjure Light, but some aspects were more tedious to test than others. He knew a baseline already - five minutes, about a torch worth of fire or light, ten meters, a quarter minute or so to cast. So he fell into a rhythm. Cast a candle flame, but focus on duration, then turn to reading the tome and practicing its exercises, this time focusing on those that were listed as expanding his spiritual power and thus his Magic Pool maximum. Then switch to range, sitting out in front of the temple and targeting buildings of increasing distance away. And then finally, instead of relaxing his concentration, holding the conjure light spell in his mind and trying to manipulate it. With these experiments he was able to rapidly deduce some of the rules that applied to his magic.
Strength was a step function of some kind, based around a breakpoint at three and five points of Magic Pool power. For example, a small candle flame that hardly changed form at three or four Magic Pool points, and then suddenly jumped to a stable torch sized ball at five and six, which was his maximum. Range on the other hand was geometric doubling for every point, or so it seemed to him without a good way to exactly measure, but the downside was increasing range meant that he couldn’t increase strength up past the first step, and the maximum was five doublings. Duration was the worst to measure, but he easily got a candle flame to last for over an hour, but not at range and not any hotter than that. From this, he gathered that there was some hard cap shared by all three of these measures, or just strength and the other two.
He was able to, after some conceptual shenanigans, to get the light source to move from his head to his hand. It turned out that rather than a ball of light as he had imagined, it was a halo. He wasn’t exactly sure how he felt about that. Indeed, it gave him enough doubt that he checked to make sure he had a belly button (he did). Something to do with the lack of body hair? I feel distinctly less real suddenly. What was of greater interest was the interplay of casting time and concentration with Conjure Light. He had a vague notion that he could concentrate the light and combine it with heat to create a kind of laser beam attack spell, and in the interests of having it attack as quickly and often as possible, he experimented with casting time repeatedly, trying to get it as low as possible.
What he discovered was that there was a hard floor of roughly ten seconds casting time to conjure the light initially, but once it was there he could direct it from one point on his body to another point in space, or increase its strength, as quickly as he could visualize the change accurately enough. Thus encouraged, he worked on weaponizing the light. At this point, he had a five piece logic puzzle but really only knew a few of the interactions between them. Still he could solve a generalized circle of solutions for this idea. Keep casting time minimum, range short to start, maximize strength, use as much Magic Pool as needed, focused concentration. Duration was a wild card, while having a cutting laser he could direct would be cool, he would be content to focus the entire packet of energy into a pulse for now. He didn’t want a glow, and he didn’t care about a flame, he wanted heat, concentrated into as small an area as he could make it. Which unlocked a sixth parameter, not mentioned in the tome- area. And he had it.
The first pulse hit the wall he had been aiming at and left a dim glow, about the size of the palm of his hand. Summoning the halo again, he focused even smaller, down to a pencil thin lance of light… which darted forth for less than a second and carved a hole in the stone, sending glowing hot shards of rock and smoke into the air around it.
—
Magic: Manipulation
Spells: Lance of Heat
Skills: Magical Theory 36%->42%, Intensity 39%->42%, Duration 0%->35%, Range 0%->36%, Area 0%->24%, Magical Targeting 0%->68%
Magic Pool 5(33)
—
“YES!”
Having nearly exhausted his Magic Pool, he took a few minutes to Draw Breath and recharge. More sacrifices, for Manipulation this time. But who, or what, did he sacrifice to? He hadn’t followed the worship ritual for Arachnae, not because he was against it but because he didn’t know how compatible this divine magic was with whatever it was he was doing. More questions without answers.
It also got him thinking about how Melite could sense this. Was it because this was her domain, so to speak? Or could any magic user feel it? The tome was silent on the idea of sensing power inhalation like what he was doing, and indeed never discussed recharging the Magic Pool at all, focusing instead on worship rituals to recharge the user's Glyph Pool. Maybe he could work it into conversation with Annirith, if she was amenable to the idea of helping him learn. It seemed plausible at least.
Recharged, Phoenix spent some time finding the limits of Lance of Heat. With some practice, he was able to double the range while still maintaining it’s killing power, which was gratifying as every meter of distance was useful. Its accuracy was amazing, with no leading needed, but it did require considerable hand eye coordination to get right, as there was no lee way, it struck exactly what it was pointed at and that was not always what he thought he was pointing at. Still, after three attempts, he was able to instantly decapitate a squirrel as it ran for the safety of the trees, a more humane and efficient hunting weapon than Conjure Flame. It also proved to be a useful knife in skinning and cleaning the kill, stretching his mental muscles to work in such a precise way, hot enough to cut but not for so long that he destroyed the meat beneath the skin.
So this is what it was going to be like, solving algebraic logic puzzles with possibly unknown rules and hazy ill defined limits. Lance of Heat proves that the more precise I get at solving this, the more effective the spell, but it is flat impossible to get an exact solution to these things at the moment. He comforted himself knowing that he had invested heavily in Mentality for just this reason.
While the squirrel cooked along with some of the mushrooms, he did a quick review of his task list (One down!) and defense was the next need. Fire seemed a poor choice for defense, except for possibly wreathing himself in flames hot enough to destroy incoming attacks? That seemed like it would be magic intensive, and he wasn’t sure how he could protect himself from the heat such a defense would require. Air too was thematically a poor choice, although a whirlwind, which he didn’t know how to make, that blew away incoming attacks was a possibility. Some quick tests with Conjure Breath convinced him that he likely needed to unlock another Glyph to move air deliberately, rather than have it naturally accommodate changes by creating localized high or low pressure spots. He set those aside for the time being, in the maybe pile. It was clear then he needed a new Glyph, but what should he work towards? Earth seemed a likely candidate, strong and stable and literally grounded. Or should he go more high concept? Was the idea of ‘attack’ a Glyph, much like the idea of Truth? He liked the idea of a conceptual defense, as that would, he hoped, be a more general protection against all kinds of attack, physical and magical.
All this practice had burned the remains of the day into a cool dusk, clouds jetting across the sky in purples, oranges, and distant grays. He finished his supper and spent a little time arranging the rocks of his home into a wall at the entrance, to at least slow down an intruder enough, and force them to make enough noise, to let him wake up and prepare a defense. Now if it was one of the fairy folk, who could fly in unimpeded through the door or gash in the ceiling, well there was nothing yet he could do about that. But one little step at a time. Then he lay down on the bed of pine, made much more comfortable by his cowl and its hood which could act like a pillow while still protecting his flesh from stabby little needles, and let himself drift off to sleep, lulled by the croaking frogs and buzzing crickets.
Day 6
—
Name: Phoenix
Attributes: 0 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)
Magic: Fire, Air, Conjure, Draw, Manipulation
Spells: Conjure Flame, Conjure Light, Conjure Breath, Draw Flame, Draw Breath, Lance of Heat
Skills: Ritual (Worship Arachnae) 23%. Speak Language Tul’Lian 75%. Read and Write Language Tul’Lian 75%, Survival 30%->32%, Meditate 18%, Fists and Feet 23%, Persuasion 22%, Etiquette 24%, Carousing 12%, Magical Theory 42%, Intensity 42%, Duration 35%, Range 36%, Area 24%, Magical Targeting 68%
Luck Uses: 1
Hit Points: 14
Magic Pool 33
—
He woke to the patter of rain coming through the tear in the roof above him, fortunately he was protected from the wet by the remaining stone but the air had gotten considerably colder with the clouds. For once, he wasn’t wounded, exhausted, freezing, starving, dehydrated, or hungover, so he counted that as a major win. Since he even had breakfast near to hand, he spent some time going over his panel in some detail. Besides, it delayed him from having to go out into the rain. He spent some time selecting entries and seeing what they explained as he looked into their details, a task he had done to good effect when with Arachne before incarnating, but now he had a host of new entries to pore over. He was particularly interested in the Magic entries, starting with his favorite, Fire.
—
Fire: Light, heat, flame, mentality, perception, purity.
—
Fascinating! He had worked with the three physical applications of course, but knowing that there were more cerebral or emotional aspects was going to open up brand new avenues of spell research.
—
Air: Breath, weather, lightning, strength, manipulation, violence
—
Did not expect violence out of air, or strength for that matter. He would have guessed earth, but clearly this world operated on different rules than he was used to. Lightning was a nice find, another avenue for an offensive effect.
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
—
Conjure: Summon, manifest, call forth. Opposite: Dismiss.
Draw: recycle, energy conversion, harvest.
Manipulation: shape, craft, force to act.
—
These three simply listed what felt like a list of synonyms for each word, although he was sure that they had some deeper meaning. Conjure however, listed an entry for Opposite: Dismiss. When he focused on that term, he got
—
Dismiss: Dispel, ward, protect. Opposite: Conjure.
—
Jackpot! This sounded like what he was looking for, conceptually. Ward, protect, now we were talking! He made a mental note to see about trying to unlock that as soon as possible.
Moving on to the spell list, where before they had been empty, now they listed each of the basic parameters he had so carefully worked out yesterday. In addition, they listed what Glyphs were used, which seemed obvious at first but perhaps later would be less so. The most intriguing thing they showed was the entry for Magic Pool Cost, using Lance of Heat as an example:
—
Lance of Heat: Fire, Conjure; Ranged, Instant, Sourced; Magic Pool Cost 2 plus Intensity, Range; Skill: Magical Targeting 68%.
—
So there was a base cost, which so far was two for each spell, and then some variable set of costs for intensity, range, area, and duration. So he was right in a way, there was a cap, but it might have been coincidence that all three items parameters worked out to the same cap? More experimentation needed, or better yet a new book. One that discussed his magical style explicitly, rather than tangentially. But he felt like he should be able to adjust strength and say, duration, as two separate dials on these spells, rather than having this feeling of a tug of war between the two.
Enough procrastinating, let’s get today’s chores done.
Wood for the fire would be wet from the rain, but he could cheat a little with his Conjure Flame so it was worth collecting anyway. He experimented with his new Lance of Fire as a fishing technique, and it worked well once he worked out the refraction, so he had a pair of fish to cook and eat for the day. The metallic and probably magical material of the cowl was waterproof to the rain, especially with the hood up, so he was even reasonably warm and dry the whole time, except for his poor toes which felt like little ice cubes by the time he was done. He caught himself hoping that it would warm up sooner rather than later, but then reminded himself about how miserable it would be to sleep in the sweltering heat with no air conditioning or even a box fan. Maybe just this side of too cold was ok, all things considered.
Noon found him ensconced back in his altar room, warming his feet with a Conjure Flame and at the same time drying the wood and cooking the fish, magical tome on his lap and working through an example divine spell that was used as a primary defense. The issue was that the example Shield could be used with practically any Divine Glyph, with only extremely limited exceptions, but that was not because each Glyph could create a shield. Instead the actual effect was to channel the protection of the deity in question directly. Powerful, worked on both physical and magical attacks, but ultimately useless to him.
He took a mental step back, returning to his idea of a conceptual defense of some kind. He knew that non-elemental Glyphs existed, as Arachnae was associated with Truth. And he knew more than Truth existed, because it opposed The Great Lie, which was also a Glyph. He recalled a passage from the book’s front matter, which talked about how Arachnae bound up the world of Lia to keep it from falling apart. This was when the other deities had still been active in the world, and the tome mentions a deity in the pantheon of Arachnae, who wielded the sword called Death and severed themselves from all others. They were the death deity, and are also associated with Truth, as Arachnae was, for it is through Death that The Great Lie is revealed.
So he had a few options then, concept wise. Life, Death? Did it make sense to Conjure Life, or Dismiss Death? Or was that just two paths to the same destination? Alternately, Truth or The Great Lie, although that was getting into really deep philosophical waters there, trying to magically enforce the idea that life was a lie and death the truth that ended that lie. Frankly, Phoenix didn’t know how much he even agreed with that concept, despite or even because he had supposedly died and been re-incarnated. Heretical, he supposed, but if he didn’t believe in it then how was he supposed to enforce his will through magical means on the world around him?
Ok, bring it together Phoenix. What have we got?
Dismiss had the characterizations in his panel of ward and protect, so he decided that path was the better option. As to the second Glyph, he still was torn between Death, Truth, or The Great Lie. Dismiss Truth? Dismiss Lie? Dismiss Death? Setting the book aside, he picked up the sharp rock he had been using as a knife, holding it out in front of him to examine the edge, like he was holding a sword. He could see just how sharp the flint-like stone was, with light shining through the edge and even the chipped parts sharp as a razor.
Before this, life. After this, death. The Truth of The Great Lie is that the edge is the line between life and death. If he imagined this crude knife as a sword, black and gleaming and lethal, it did not Dismiss Truth, that was for sure and certain, it was truth. Dismiss Lie. There was something there, but was it what he was looking for? That felt more ephemeral, more cerebral a defense. He wanted to hold on to it but he forced himself back from the brink, stubbornly holding on to his goal. Ward. Death. His heart beat in his ears, a rising bass crescendo. The rock now an obsidian knife, swallowing the light around it except for that bright edge, dancing and glittering in the firelight. Death. That shining edge was transferred to his skin, like a blanket wrapped tight around him. Ward. Without conscious thought, he brought the knife down, hard, against the palm of his other hand.
It bounced.
Breathing heavily, his heart still racing, the trance was broken. With no small amount of awe, he looked at the untouched skin of the palm of his hand, and the stone blade in the other, then hurriedly brought up the panel.
—
Magic: Death, Dismiss
Spells: Death Ward
Skills: Passivity 26%
Hit Points: 13(14) [healing, 2 days remaining]
Magic Pool: 31
Magic Burn I
—
He was flush with victory until the slight dribble of blood down his chin alerted him to the bloody nose he had sprung. Leaning forward across his knees and pinching his nose closed he caught the blood in his other hand, trying to spare his cowl from any stains.
What the heck! I pushed things too fast? I should slow down how many Glyphs I sacrifice for, at least until I can figure out what is going on.
It took quite a while for the bloody nose to stop, and he had a dull throbbing headache afterwards, so he used that as a good enough reason to slack off for the rest of the day. He wanted to test the Death Ward, but that was going to be tricky and even dangerous, so best to do that when he was at 100%. He had used up a good tenth or more of his Magic Pool. Time to make sure he could repair those sacrifices and figure out just how long that was going to take him. And he had accomplished his goals for the short term, both personal and those set by Arachnae, and was well on his way to surviving the next week or so with a minimum of risk, so taking his foot off the gas for an evening wasn’t the worst idea.
Of course, lying there staring moodily at the fire, he really didn’t have anything to do with himself. Anytime he let his thoughts drift, they immediately cycled back to chewing over the unanswerable questions about magic he had, which in turn strongly tempted him to crack open the book and practice some exercise, which until that Magic Burn went away he strongly suspected was a bad idea. It was a recipe to make him restless and annoyed with himself.
He considered calling Annirith, but it had only been yesterday that they had parted, and he didn’t want to seem overeager or needy. Gods above, it's like I’m dating. Tomorrow, tomorrow is early enough to call her, assuming she is even available to visit. Standing up, he raised the hood on his cowl and stalked out. Rain or no, I’m going exploring, I’ll go crazy sitting here doing nothing!
He started by heading directly away from the canal and the forest beyond. He had pretty thoroughly mapped that area already, and he wanted to poke his nose into some of the ruins in search of more magic items. Hopefully not further undead guardians! But even a few seemingly minor tools or such would be a great boon.
Cautiously, he summoned his light halo above his head, as the late afternoon light under the rain clouds wasn’t particularly strong, certainly not inside the cave like stone structures still standing. He was relieved to find that, whatever Mana Burn was, it didn’t seem to limit his spell casting any. Especially reassuring if he needed to blast something in the face. With that in mind, he called out that blanket feeling to layer the Death Ward on, just to practice and as potential insurance from say a surprise attack or falling chunk of rock. The new passivity skill seemed to help with both the Conjure Light and Death Ward, since he found he didn’t need to concentrate to maintain either, and although recasting them every five minutes was a little annoying, it was good practice.
With preparations finished, he strode with confidence into the nearby buildings, a long stick in hand for poking around in things he might find. Most of them were naturally quite empty, or a tangle of bushes and brambles, or so collapsed as to be impassable. One had what appeared to be a fox den in it, which he steered wide of to give the poor foxes some space. He was getting a sense of the layout of the old city. There was a clear demarcation between the edge of the city, near the temple and canal, and the forest, with tumble down rocks giving every indication of an old stone wall foundation that had long ago collapsed. If the shape continued on, it would form a rather large circle, roughly one and a half or so kilometers in diameter, and remarkably densely populated. Admittedly he was making several assumptions here, but even with a family of only four per house, unless he came across some fairly large parks soon, there were upwards of forty thousand or more people living in the city at one time. Or at least housing for them.
Pretty decent sized place, for a medieval tech level culture. Not that he had any evidence on their technology level, granted. For a place as densely populated as this, that had presumably been sacked by an invading army, there was a remarkable lack of rotting corpses strewn about. No broken weapons, arrow heads, pieces of broken armor or other such detritus that he would expect to leave evidence. Was it even longer ago than he thought, and it had all worn away? The temple corpses were perhaps preserved by being sealed inside and protected from the elements.
Testing out his theory of the shape of the city being a (nearly) perfect circle, he headed towards the center, a relatively quick hike along a relatively clear road that still retained most of its paving stones. True to the math, he arrived at a roundabout style roadway, the center of which was a collapsed tower, round, approximately ten meters in diameter, the top two thirds lying on its side blocking the road. Unlike the rest of the ruined structures he had seen, it wasn’t time and the elements that had torn this thing down. The break point was a mixture of shattered stone worn by rain and wind, and melted stone, as if some immense heat had carved away most of the supporting wall and forced the collapse.
Magic? Or something else?
He tried to estimate how much Magic Pool he would need to carve a chunk of stone like that. Under ideal circumstances, and assuming the energy he could create was linear, sixty? Maybe half again as much? Call it two or three times as much Magic Pool as he had. Never mind the unknown cap he was struggling to push against. If it was magic that had destroyed this tower, it was an order of magnitude more powerful than what he could perform. The thought made him feel vulnerable again, even as far as he had come since his arrival.
The blasted base of the tower was entirely filled with rubble and blocked, but the hollow center of the keeled over part was still clear, and remarkably intact. Curious, he crawled along the wall, clambering over the stairway and heading toward the room at the top. Once there, he paused, taking in the contents with a degree of awe.
The first thing that stood out to him was the large, cracked crystal that lay against the groundside wall of the room. It clearly had been mounted in the middle of the structure at one time, but was dislodged and damaged by the collapse. The rotted remains of wooden furniture, little more than splinters and dust, were scattered about as well. The rooms walls and ceilings were gorgeously painted, frescos of people in armor wielding spears victoriously slaughtering demonic looking enemies. No windows or other openings graced the walls.
And tangled underneath the cracked crystal, was another skeletal corpse.
Phoenix was immediately wary. No bodies anywhere but now here is a single one, undisturbed since this thing collapsed, lying here? No animals had come in here in however many decades it had been to filch a femur? Seemed suspicious as hell. Not to mention how intact the skeletal remains were, rather than scattered by gravity and time. The upside of it all was the thing was trapped underneath the weight of the crystal, so it was unlikely to jump up and attack like the previous one did.
Like the priest in the temple sanctum, this body was wearing a cowl of metallic fibers, although these lacked the luster of the fibers he wore. A large rent tear in the fabric could be seen where the crystal had pinned the corpse, presumably the fatal blow. What he could see from his position was only the lower half, two legs splayed out underneath the crystal. Setting aside his fear of the attack from before, he made his way into the room, hanging from his fingertips and dropping the foot or so to the floor slash wall. He immediately ran into a problem. The curved wall of the tower had collected the shards of crystal, broken glass, and other pointy bits in a mass- directly in front of where he wanted to go. And his feet were still bare!
Well, I wanted to test the Death Ward!
Gingerly, he knelt down and pressed the back of his hand against one of the less pointy crystals. There was a scraping noise and the crystal shifted away, millimeters away from his skin. Smiling, he chose a curved piece of glass, and pressed harder, to the same effect. Finally, he stood, placing his foot gently, then firmly, then with his whole weight behind it. He was rewarded with a quick shifting of the material underfoot, then a nice solid and safe surface to stand on. If he gave the spell time to work, he could sort of clear a path without any risk of injury. In this way, he worked over to the crystal itself, climbing over to observe the top half of his dead friend.
The top half, as it were, was much like the bottom, skeletal but intact, dressed in a tarnished cowl. The empty eye sockets were fixed on Phoenix, but he didn’t know if that was coincidental or because it had shifted to look at him while he was climbing. Creepy, either way. Clutched in its hands was another book, metallic but this one made of a blue glass like material, translucent rather than shiny. And more importantly, undamaged! He restrained the sudden impulse to grab the thing immediately.
“Well, are you motile my trapped friend?” He sat on the crystal awkwardly, making sure he was out of reach. No response, although the eyeless face still was staring in his direction. Slowly, he reached one hand towards the book, nerves taught in anticipation. Just before he could touch it, one the skeletal arms slashed out, and he jerked back as quick as he could. Apparently not fast enough, cause he could feel the slight sting of an impact against his wrist. Rubbing it gently he frowned.
Limits again. Well no bleeding and nothing broken, but I am not invulnerable. Good to know.
And of course the thing was moving now, stretching to try and grab his foot or the hem of his cowl. He skootched back further out of reach, then a little farther, just in case it made a lunge at him. Sighing, he waited a bit, to see if it would settle down.
“I am sorry you are stuck there. Can you understand me? Maybe we can come to some agreement?” Shockingly, the thing stopped moving and returned to clutching its book.
“Oh hell, I think you can understand me. I really hope you are not in any pain.” Phoenix paused there, considering the situation. “Maybe I can get you loose, if you promise not to go all Night of the Living Dead on me?”
The skeleton stared at him for a few seconds, then very deliberately shook its head side to side. No.
“Ah, well, ok then. Conundrum. Well, I admit that is kind of disappointing. I imagine you have been pretty stir crazy and lonely here, trapped like you are.”
It simply kept a level gaze on him, unresponsive.
Well damn. I mean I could just vaporize its skull like the other one, but if it is really sentient then how similar to murder would that be? And would it count as innocent?
He had a natural moral twinge killing anything, really, but he was conscious of the first rule of his contractual obligations, which very specifically called out the murder of innocents. Oh hell, had he already violated that? He was suddenly afraid Arachnae would take a very dim view of his burning the skeleton remains of one of her priests in order to loot its body and take her holy book!
It was self defense! I didn’t even know it was intelligent! Clearly! Or so I hope she agrees cause I could be in some serious trouble. Not two days into my new life and I may have broken the first rule! Well, I definitely want to be extra careful here, executing this poor guy might be a mercy but it certainly isn’t self defense!
“Maybe we can get to know each other, and you might change your mind?” he smiled and looked at the skeleton encouragingly. No change.
“Ok, how about this, is there something you want? Like, are you a trapped spirit who could be laid to rest if I finish some last task you feel was unfinished in your life?”
Another pause, and this time it nodded yes. Progress! Ok now do I have to play twenty one questions here or can I coax some words out of this guy.
“Good, right, I don’t suppose you can speak?” it slowly shook its head no. “Figures. Wait, could you maybe use the book you have to point out words to me?” This was an utterly brilliant plan. Not only would it greatly facilitate communication, but he could easily memorize the contents of whatever page it showed him! A long enough conversation about enough topics, and he might see and retain the whole thing! Clever Phoenix!
It seemed to be thinking about that for a while, so Phoenix let it, instead examining the room for any other options or interesting things that might have been hidden by the mass of the crystal. There was a lot of broken glassware here as well, and maybe the ancient remains of a table, all smashed and rotten nearly past recognizability. One thing that caught his eye was a sling bag, made of the same magical (he presumed) metallic fiber as the cowls, laying crushed under the table remains out of the reach of the skeleton. If he could work his way around to that, it might be worth grabbing, and might not involve killing anything or one.
The skeleton seemed to make up its mind, and opened the book it was holding up. Keeping it firmly away from Phoenix, it showed him a page and pointed to a word on it. Phoenix’s heart sank.
I can’t read that language!
So much for clever ruses! Well he memorized the page anyway, but as far as communication went, not as much help. “I’m sorry, it was a good idea but I can’t read whatever that language is. Obviously you understand Tul’lian, and I can read that as well, perhaps…”
It occurred to him then that he could use the Arachnae worship tome as a kind of translator, crude as such communication would be. Had the potential advantage of teaching him at least some of the vocabulary and written words of a new language, which didn’t suck.
“Wait right there, I’ll be right back!”
He was halfway back to his campsite before he realized just how silly that phrase had been.
It was full dark before he could make it back, but he remained determined and the halo provided ample light to navigate. He had yet to see anything particularly dangerous other than the undead, and nothing had come sniffing around his rather obvious campsite, so he felt rather confident that traipsing around in the dark wasn’t exceptionally risky. Besides, he was decked out now, Death Ward raised, halo on, ready to fire his laser beam as needed or set something alight. Even a wolf or bear would be quite deterred by the combination!
Arriving back at the tower, he found his new found friend still there (Duh!) and spent the next hour trading words in Tul’lian and the new language of the book it was guarding. His perfect memory made this a much easier task, as did the infinite patience of a trapped undead with nothing better to do with its time. He even picked up a syllabary slash alphabeta, which let them spell out words in Tul’lian for when neither book contained the right written words, although he had no idea if he was pronouncing them correctly. One word or short phrase at a time, the undead’s story came out.
Her name was “Sah bee yah”, which he gathered was either Sabiya or Cybilla, and she was a priestess of Lia, the primary deity of the Empire of Tul’Lia and sister to Arachnae. She was some kind of guardian of the tower, although between them they couldn’t get an exact word for her duties. She had died some ‘very long ago’, she was sadly unsure how long, when the city had been attacked, and perished in the opening of the battle. She actually had two requests for him. The first was the duty that was keeping her soul here instead of moving on, which was a sworn duty to decommission the tower to prevent its secrets from falling into enemy hands, and the second was to find out any news he could of her family. Once this became clear, he nodded somberly to her.
“I am sorry to inform you but it has been 40 or 50 years at least since the fall of this place. The fate of your family would be basically impossible to discern after so much passage of time. The only other corpses that I have discovered were in the sanctum of the Arachnae temple, a priestess, several guards, and a handful of worshipers or other civilians in a sealed room. They did not die violent deaths.” He elided the animate nature of the priestess. “It is where I found this robe and the book. I hope its ok I took them, I arrived here with literally nothing.”
Sabiya (he was sticking with the easier transliteration of her name) seemed understanding about the whole graverobbing aspect of things, indicating she would rather that he have the holy items than her enemies. She did encourage him to make his way to the capital where he would be safe, although without a map she eventually could only provide very general directions- south and west until you hit mountains, then west along the mountains until you reach the capital, some months on foot apparently and quite dangerous. She then indicated the bag and explained that what she needed was in there.
Welp, here we are. The crux of the matter, do I trust her? If this is a trap, if she has just been building all this up to get me to give her a ranged weapon, I could be handing her my death.
With no facial expressions or body language to go off of, he was at a serious disadvantage in trying to discern her veracity. He decided on a (slightly!) less risky test first.
“Well, the only way I can get to the bag is if I climb down next to you, then over to the bag. How do you feel about that?”
Don’t worry. Won’t hurt you.
Right, well, trust in Death Ward, good reflexes, and a well timed Lance!
Swallowing hard, he gathered his nerve and dropped from the crystal to just beside her. She stayed very still, other than to hold on to the book a little tighter, which he supposed was perfectly understandable.
I guess I am not the only one extending some trust here, I could try and wrest the book away from her and doom her to an eternity of trapped darkness. Good thing I am not that level of asshole.
Crawling slowly over the mess of broken glass and dusty debris, he reached the bag. It was relatively simple to unearth it, and he opened its mouth to peer inside. All he could see there was another plate of deep blue glass, and then some kind of dark residue.
Doesn’t look too threatening. Here we go.
He withdrew the plate and handed it over to her. She quickly grabbed it, clutching it in both hands and literally shaking with what he assumed was emotion. Wasting no more time, she did something to the slate which caused a panel to appear on it, very recognizable as similar to the one he had been calling up regularly this whole time! It’s not just me!
She then tapped it several times, and then carefully set it aside where it went dark. After a few seconds, her bones lost all cohesion and fell apart, exactly as the other one had done, which did NOT make him feel better about what he had done in the temple, but gave him hope that she had found rest at last. He gathered the books, the blue plate panel, the bag, and then after several moments, he picked up and stored all her bones and her cowl in the bag.
Least I can do is give her a decent burial.
Melancholy, he returned to his camp, using his magic to stoke the fire nice and bright to ward away the chill, damp air and feelings inside him. Tomorrow would be soon enough to bury her, and the others down below, and then maybe he would call Annirith, just to have her cool gaze to cheer him up. On that dismal note, he curled up on his ‘bed’ and willed his eyes closed. His dreams were filled with images of a headless skeleton chasing him about the sanctum below, and he woke several times to dim firelight and shadows, where true rest was a broken mess.