As it turned out, making the cup create other spices was just as easy as salt was. It was created to accept intent and would do the work on its own. What you made did change up how much ki it took, with salt being practically the cheapest, only beaten out by water, but I wouldn’t be using the cup for water, not with the river being so close. Herbs were more expensive, but the real luxuries were honey, cream, and alcohol. Sadly, the days when I could casually refill my barrel of beer were far off in the future.
Another interesting thing was that while the cup could easily create baking soda, it wouldn’t give me yeast. Probably because the latter actually needed to be alive to work. Well, I’d have to go with sourdough then, for any future breads I would make. The cup also didn’t have a problem with giving me a mixture of different spices.
I also found out that relying on my posture to try and guide ki into the cup resulted only in marginal gains, whereas having the cup actually in hand – or even just touching it in any other way – while you were charging it helped immensely. And the practice seemed to be paying off: by the time I decided to go sleep I could see a marked improvement in how readily environmental ki would react to my will.
In the morning I immediately made good use of the spices I created: there was still most of the soup left, so I added some garlic, paprika and estragon. I could have added more, thyme, rosemary, marjoram, and lovage, but I decided to wait with those, given how long I would have to keep eating this soup. It might even turn into my version of a perpetual stew if I kept adding ingredients.
My goal for the day was exploration: the furthest I went from the cave was when I transformed the first day, and so I would need to get a better idea on where exactly I was and what was in the area.
After packing up my camp and bringing in everything that an enterprising animal could find interesting into the cave, I put together some supplies for a day trip, including a couple of extra sacks that I could tie onto my backpack, if I found anything interesting. Naturally, I also brought my axe, but not the javelins I had – I would need to spend some time practicing with them before I felt comfortable enough to try and hunt with them.
I decided to go and see what I would find downstream. The trek was easy if a bit frustrating: the very same kind of birds I had in my cauldron were rather common in the area, and they would immediately fluff themselves up and begin shrieking as soon as they spotted me. Then all the rest would take up the call, and soon the whole forest was echoing with the grating noise they made. Other times it wouldn’t be me to set them off, but they would still be just as loud. This meant that I didn’t really see any other animals, except for something that looked like a deer from the distance, but it was already bounding away, and I barely even caught a glimpse.
I had more luck with plants: I managed to pick up quite the variety. Wild onions, tubers, mushrooms, different kinds of fruit, as well as more of the beetradishes and crescent nuts I found the day before.
Despite stopping to forage, I made good time. The first major waypoint I found was the river I followed joining together with a pair of tributaries coming from different directions in a long series of rapids, and then making a sharp right. The scenery opened up a bit there as the river cut through in-between two smaller peaks, coming out into what looked like a large valley. I could also see a large lake gleaming in the sunlight.
At this point, the path started to become steeper, the river running even faster. Still, the lake wasn’t all that far, maybe six or seven miles from the bend.
Once I arrived at the lake, I could see that it was just as clear as I imagined it would be. I could see fish that were tens of feet from me just as easily as all the plants growing on the lake’s bottom. The river that brought me here wasn’t the only one feeding the lake, I could see three more. The closest one, just half a mile away to the north, seemed to be a bit smaller, while the other two were clearly both bigger. There was also a river leading away from the lake, further down in the south.
Looking around I could see old signs of floods, so I would have to pay attention to those in spring. Snowmelt could bring down immense amounts of water, and I wouldn’t want to get flushed out from my cave.
Another thing I noticed was that the banks of the lake were pretty much full of weeping willows. So much so that there were hardly any other types of trees on the shore. A bit further away, sure, but right on the shore it was willow upon willow.
Not knowing what to make of it, I decided instead to see if I could find out whether the smallest tributary of the lake led to anywhere interesting – or at least offered an alternative way back to my cave.
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The answer was sort of yes to both those questions: that river climbed even more steeply than the one I followed down, and I soon found the point where it was breaking out from the mountain. It was the mouth of a sizeable cave, some 40 feet in the air. It made for a spectacular waterfall, but the path up didn’t look easily traversable. It wouldn’t be impossible to get into the cave, not by far, but the were hardly any flat surfaces in the vicinity of the entrance, and the whole thing was slippery from the water splashing everywhere.
So instead of trying for the cave, I backtracked a bit until I found another path leading up to the peak that I passed earlier. It was narrow, used probably by goats, or something similar. This assumption of mine was proven right when I failed to spot one of said animals, a red-coated, oversized cousin of bighorn sheep, before it rushed me just as I was pulling myself up to a ledge. It arrived just as I stood up, horns first. Let’s just say that getting rammed by a 300-pound sheep on steroids is a painful experience. And let us also make the comparison that it’s still nowhere as painful as when you can feel your rapid regeneration pushing the fragments of your recently broken bones back together.
My lycanthropy put me back together in less than a quarter of an hour, yet I still lay there for triple that time, just trying to come to terms with feeling that much pain for the first time in my life. The sheep did try to come and see if it managed to completely put me out of commission or not, but just growling at it for a bit did the trick to scare it into giving myself space and time to recuperate.
Knowing that I couldn’t continue lying there forever, I forced myself to get up. The sheep was watching me from up on the ledge, probably waiting for me to croak or to repeat its maneuver from earlier.
Rather than giving it the satisfaction of getting me twice within the hour, I picked up a fistful of stones and hurled them at it. More than half went wide, but the rest hit with enough force to make the sheep stagger. It immediately turned tail and ran up the path, vanishing behind the trees. Smiling, I once again tried climbing the ledge – but with more caution this time. The sheep didn’t try again. Opportunistic coward. When I got to the place it was observing me from, I found blood. Not much, but I did manage to make it bleed in retaliation.
I managed to get to the peak without further incidents, but occasionally spotting a sheep or two in the distance. None of them attacked, but I could see them observing me. Maybe it was just my imagination, but I felt malicious intent coming from them.
The peak itself was windy and without much vegetation beyond the occasional sturdy bush or stubborn bit of grass. It provided an excellent view of the surroundings: all around there were mountains, many reaching much higher than the one I was standing on. They encircled the valley, with only a few passes leading away.
Although the view was beautiful, my encounter with the sheep was still fresh on my mind and I couldn’t enjoy it properly. I kept looking around, watching for the damn things.
Still, I wanted to try to see how the environmental ki looked from up here. It would have been a good idea to do the same down in the valley and at the waterfall, but the idea only occurred to me when I was already well on my way to the peak.
To assuage my freshly minted paranoia, I set about rearranging the peak a bit. I started at the largest rock I could find and brought over a few more that were considerable in size. I set them up in a loose circle, just so that the sheep wouldn’t be able to charge me.
Despite these preparations, it took me twice as long as usual to switch over to sensing ki. And the results were interesting, if a bit disappointing: there was much less environmental ki up here, compared to my clearing, and what was there moved with much less purpose.
Filing away that little tidbit, I went about finding myself a way down. First, I oriented myself, finding the riverbend near my cave, and then starting down the path most likely to lead into that direction.
Halfway to the riverbend, the path actually came to the edge of a sheer precipice, and I easily recognized my clearing from above. This meant that I cut to the left as soon as an option presented itself, even though it meant I had to climb a bit in places. Thankfully there were no sheep around when I did, so I managed to get down without any trouble.
Once back at my cave, I took stock of all the damage the sheep caused. I have already healed and did so perfectly: no lingering aches or anything. Thankfully, there wasn’t much blood, as none of the breaks I suffered were open, and the abrasions from when I landed seem to have healed almost as fast as I got them. On the other hand, there were quite a lot of tears in my clothes, that I was decidedly not looking forward to mending. For now, I decided not to bother with it and just got a change of clothes after I washed myself down.
Going over my backpack I found that most of the forage I had collected was crushed into mush, and that the waterskin I brought along with me burst as I fell on it. I could salvage some of the vegetables and mushrooms from the soaked mess, by simply chucking the more intact pieces into my stew, but the fruit and the crescent nuts were a total loss. The backpack itself was pretty much intact, just scuffed in places and in need of some thorough cleaning, that I decided not to put off until later: it would be easier to do it before the juices from the fruits had a chance to dry. Thankfully, I was using sacks to gather and organize my forage, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
Still, I decided to call open season on the sheep, along with the birds I decided to call shriekers. Because reasons.