Chapter 18 - THE BLANKET FORT
“What did you get this time?” Callie said into the semi-darkness.
“Something called F-F-Flashbang, whatever that is,” the Pixyl-ish sounding voice in the dark said in return, before biting into a piece of fruit that had been smuggled into the blanket fort.
“Ooo, I know what that might be,” Callie said excitedly. “I’ve heard that term on my world. It’s like a really loud sound and a flash of light, to disorient somebody. Police use it when they break into houses to scare criminals.”
“You have a strange w-w-world.”
“Yeah, I know,” Callie giggled, biting into her own piece of the juicy, yellow fruit. As promised, someone had brought a big bowl of fruit and left it in the bunkhouse while they were all at the mess tent. What Callie was eating tasted like some strange cross between a pear and a strawberry, but a little more tart than one would expect. And was it juicy! So much so that a blanket had been dedicated solely to the job of being a towel.
Major Celeste had miraculously managed to locate someone to deliver a huge pile of additional blankets, and immediately Callie set to work throwing them over the spare Ogre bed, crafting the mother-of-all blanket forts. She used some of the additional blankets to build a big nest under it to make the floor soft. It took some convincing, but the scowling Pixyl finally surrendered to the idea of Callie’s weird child’s game, and Fort Puny was born.
So, for the last hour the two had been hiding in their blanket fort, gossiping like teenagers and eating sticky, yellow pearberry fruit. Pixyl didn’t talk a lot, but seemed to be smiling more. Callie couldn’t tell if she was quiet due to her stutter, or because they weren’t stories she wanted to share; maybe a little of both. But the Pixie was content and even enraptured with stories that Callie was telling about Earth. Pixyl hung on Callie’s every word, just staring at her big purple eyes, occasionally asking for a clarification, but largely just letting the Gnome talk. They weren’t even really good stories! Callie had spent ten minutes explaining how the automatic doors worked at the supermarket, and then needed to do a deep dive into what a supermarket was, and then how the checkout line worked. Pixyl didn’t care. She loved it all.
During that time, Callie received two new reveals:
NEW PERK: WILDERNESS SURVIVAL
NEW SKILL: FLARE
The second came while Callie was trying to explain to Pixyl what tacos were, and trying to describe the flavor. It was hard. and the best she came up with was ‘spicy’ and ‘nummy’, neither of which was any real help. There had to be a better way to describe taste to someone, Callie thought, and then realized there may be. The Culinar specialist skills might be learnable, with work and time, and maybe she could find a way to replicate ‘spicy’ and ‘nummy’ with the spices and magics of this world. This would require a good conversation with the camp’s head chef.
When Pixyl finally got another reveal of her own, Callie held her hand and walked her through the vertigo, made much easier since they were lying down, and the fact it was only one. Pixyl had already put her suppression bracelets on, cinching them tight around her biceps, on the off chance she lost control again.
“What did you get?” Callie asked.
“Ethereal Flare,” Pixyl said, a confused tone in her voice. “No idea what it d-d-does.”
She knew she shouldn’t but this was Pixyl and she’d find out soon enough. “I know how you can find out,” Callie whispered. “Commandant Xera told me.”
“While you were naked in the shower slowly undressing them?”
“Yes, that’s when,” Callie said, rolling her eyes. “Anyway, here’s what you do.” Callie spilled the beans on Xera’s early-access secret. Pixyl was skeptical at first, because it really was so simple and obvious, but trying to get her mind calm enough to even ask the question proved incredibly difficult. It took several minutes of joint breathing exercises before it finally went through, and she got the info dump on her new Ethereal Flare skill.
“I got it!” she said excitedly.
“Tell me!” Callie squealed with equal excitement.
“It says I can launch a ball of Ethereal light up to 30 meters, and it will stick to anything solid. It then glows brightly for three minutes. One charge and a 5 minute recharge.”
Callie tried to picture it. “Whoa! I can’t wait to see that one! I bet you get more charges and it lasts longer at higher Tiers.”
“That’s right! How about one of y-y-yours? Maybe your Flare skill you just g-g-got? Is it like mine?”
“Sure! Let me look it up,” Callie said.
Tell me about Flare
SKILL: FLARE (IRON TIER)
MANA USAGE: LOW
CASTING TIME: 3 SECONDS
RECHARGE TIME: 60 SECONDS
CHARGES: 1
DESCRIPTION: This ability enchants a prepped arrow, causing it to emit bright light. The casting process requires 3 seconds, and once complete, the arrow must be fired within 10 seconds, or the effect will dissipate. After being fired, the arrow will begin to glow a maximum of 3 seconds (variable at cast time) after release and will glow for 20 seconds. If fired skyward, the arrow will descend gently towards the ground once it reaches its peak. As the skill advances, the casting and recharge time will decrease. Additionally, the duration of the glow will increase, as well as the window of opportunity to fire the arrow and the number of charges available.
Now that was interesting. It didn’t say specifically, but there was no doubt that this flare, if launched into the air, would light up a wide area. It wasn’t so important for Callie and Pixyl, both of whom had Darkvision. And even Lena and Vanis had Night Vision, which was almost as good. But for Tazrok and Xin? They didn’t have any ability to see in low-light that they had mentioned, and surely there were other races that didn't have sight abilities, too. Now, with one launch of an arrow, she could light up the sky for everyone to see.
“It’s a little different than yours,” Callie said. “Mine is basically attached to an arrow, so I could shoot it into something solid and it would stick, like yours, and it doesn’t last as long. But also I can launch into the air so it just floats down slowly. So it’s different, but still similar.”
They continued the game, with Pixyl rattling off the official description of a racial trait that had been revealed when she woke up called Pixie Dust. She had already known about this one, but knowing the official information was interesting. This trait allowed her to blow a cloud of magical dust from her mouth that would daze a target, put them to sleep, or even in some cases charm the target, making them susceptible to orders for a short time. Pixyl said the range wasn’t great, since it was just a cloud of powder, and the target had to inhale it to really be affected, or at best it might only get in their eyes. It wasn’t much, but it was a nice additional tool in Pixyl’s arsenal.
Now it was Callie’s turn, and she gave some thought on which to look up, finally deciding on one she had been wondering about.
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Tell me about Tinker?
RACIAL TRAIT: TINKER
DESCRIPTION: Gnomes have an inherent mental ability to design, engineer and create strange new ideas, contraptions, weapons, machines and projects. Will synergize with related perks, skills and traits to expand the knowledge base that may be utilized by this trait.
SYNERGIZED PERKS: Advanced Archery, Carpentry, Plumbing, Electrical, Bookkeeping/Logistics, Bowyer/Fletcher
SYNERGIZED TRAITS: Underground Sense
Unlike the perks and skills, Callie didn’t get a huge dump of knowledge. Really, nothing happened. “Huh, that’s interesting,” Callie said after she shared the description with Pixyl. “It’s pretty vague what it does.”
“Gnomes are always inventing things,” Pixyl said. “Their whole culture is based around strange machines and crazy ideas. It’s why a lot of Gnomes don’t live to old age.”
Callie remembered when she and Jesca discussed age averages of the different races the day before. She had said Gnomes tended to die early to accidents. If the race had a natural tendency to try weird and crazy ideas, it wasn’t surprising they occasionally didn’t work out as intended. Callie wasn’t sure how this trait was going to translate into her day-to-day life, but it was still interesting to know there was a racial trait related to it.
“How about another one?” Callie said, excited.
“Okay. Um. You know D-D-Darkvision already. How about Ethereal Blast?”
“Ooo, that sounds fun! Yea, that one!”
Pixyl concentrated for a moment, Callie seeing she was really enjoying herself for the first time in a while.
“M-m-mana cost medium. Recharge ten seconds. One charge. Fire a blast of Ethereal energy up to five m-m-meters.”
“Hmm. I assume at higher tiers you get more charges and range and stuff?”
“Uh huh,” Pixel said.
Callie had a sudden image in her head of Pixel flying around the head of some big monster, throwing blasts of energy from her palms like Iron Man. The more she thought about it, the more she got an appreciation of how powerful the Pixie would be when she mastered her skills and combined them with her ability to fly. Lightsabers, energy blasts, disorientating flashes of light and sound. If her small size didn’t make her so fragile, she’d be virtually unstoppable hand to hand.
“Your turn!” Pixel said.
Callie thought for a moment.
Tell me about Multishot
SKILL: MULTISHOT (IRON TIER)
MANA USAGE: MEDIUM
CASTING TIME: INSTANT
RECHARGE TIME: 60 SECONDS
CHARGES: 1
MULTIPLIER: 3
DESCRIPTION: This ability imbues a prepped arrow with the power to split into 3 projectiles upon release. Each projectile can be aimed at the same target or different targets within a 15-degree cone in front of the weapon. The arrow must be fired within 10 seconds of the spell's completion, or the enchantment will dissipate. As the skill level increases, the recharge time will decrease, the window of opportunity to fire the arrow will expand, and the damage, projectile count, maximum charge count, and area of effect will increase.
Pixyl’s eyes went wide as Callie absorbed and then rattled off the information about the skill. “So you can shoot three arrows at o-o-one time?”
“Sort of,” Callie said. “It sounds like I only fire one arrow, but it will then magically split into three, and each one can target something different if they are close enough to each other. At higher tiers, more than three, too.”
“You’re going to be amazing at r-r-range,” Pixyl said.
“Me? What about you up close? You got energy blasts and power swords and everything else, plus you can fly! I bet you could literally fly circles around me.”
Even in the false light, Callie could make out Pixyl blushing at the compliments.
Their skill review was interrupted as Pixyl received two class perks at once, Ambidextrous and Dual Wield - Blades. Callie helped her through the post-reveal vertigo, which was worse than normal as there were two. After she recovered, Pixyl eagerly looked both up. They did exactly what they sounded like; the ability to use both hands with equal skill and to fight with bladed weapons in one or both hands. Pixyl was ridiculously excited as the knowledge of sword fighting techniques flooded into her mind. She explained that her Ethereal Blades skill had been unlocked for a few years now, but the perk hadn’t unlocked for some reason. The knowledge she had actually using her swords was either self-taught or from imitating others, and was utterly inelegant. In the moment, she came out of her shell and babbled excitedly, tripping over her tongue occasionally, talking about all the things she had been doing wrong all this time. Callie smiled and just let her talk, almost watching the Pixie turn into someone else before her eyes when she wasn’t under the glare of other people.
The two kept chatting and chatting, about nothing really. The game of looking up skills and sharing them, while interesting, had lost its novelty. Pixyl was really tired, and just happy to listen to Callie talk more about Earth, especially as she tried to explain how a giant piece of metal was somehow able to fly through the air carrying hundreds of people. More importantly, how it was possible without magic. Soon Callie was explaining the concepts of lift and how wing shape affected it. Callie could tell Pixyl had no idea what she was going on about, but the grin on Pixyl’s face made her happy all the same.
It was then that Callie suddenly realized she didn’t actually know anything about aircraft design, yet she had just rattled off a solid Wikipedia article about the basics of flight. How the hell did she know that? She had honestly never known anything about the topic until she started putting the concepts together in her head just now while talking. Was that the Tinker trait in action, maybe? Is that how it worked? Did she know just enough from high school and college physics classes to trigger a logical leap to aerodynamics?
Callie’s brain, now solidly pondering concepts of flight, had a sudden curiosity. “Hey Pixyl, is it okay if I ask you an odd question?” Callie asked, wiping some fruit remnants from her cheek.
“Sure,” Pixyl responded.
“How are you able to fly? Because your wings don’t seem like they’d be enough to provide lift.”
“Th-th-they don’t,” Pixyl said flatly.
Callie gave Pixyl a perplexed look. “Huh?”
“The wings are for control. We have a t-t-telek-kin… t-t-telek-kin…” Pixyl got frustrated trying to get the word out. “We p-p-push on the ground with magic.”
Callie thought a bit and jumbled that through her head. “Do you mean telekinesis?”
“Yes! That’s right.”
“So, you use telekinesis to push yourself through the air, and your wings to keep control. Is that right?”
Pixyl nodded.
Callie hadn’t expected that. She had just assumed it was all in the wings. Even knowing that telekinesis was a thing in this world was an interesting fact, although really she shouldn’t be surprised. But to know that you could use it to achieve what was effectively a form of flight … So much she didn’t understand.
“Nobody in your world flies all by themselves? J-J-Just in these aerothings?” Pixyl asked.
“No. Well, they do in the movies, like Iron Man or Superman. But they are just stories.”
“Like your W-W-Wizard academy you didn’t get to go to?
Callie laughed. “Yeah, just like that. They are fun stories, but they are just that, stories. Tony Stark doesn’t really exist, nor does Clark Kent.”
Pixyl wasn’t getting it. All the fantastical things that Callie described from books and movies, which were so obviously make believe to her, were in many cases completely in the realm of reasonableness here. A man in an armor suit flying and shooting blasts of energy? Super strong men able to lift impossibly-heavy things? That was practically a Tuesday in this world, or whatever they called Tuesday here. Trying to explain the separation between real and not was so difficult to the rest of her friends.
“This man of iron, he is not real then?” Pixyl asked, the confused look still on her face. “And there are no W-W-Wizards? And your Healers use no m-m-magic? Your world sounds … it sounds a little boring, even with those … ‘aerojets’.”
“Compared to here, yeah, it could be. Maybe that’s why we have so many stories of people and heroes with powers we can lose ourselves in, instead.”
Pixyl frowned. “Tell me one of your stories then. Maybe about this Ring Lord?”
“Ring Lord? Oh yea, the Lord of the Rings. That’s a long, complicated one, but really good. Where do I start?” If only she had a movie projector of some kind, and the movies of course. Or even her father’s gift for storytelling.
“Just start at the b-b-beginning,” Pixyl suggested, wide-eyed and eager to know more.
Callie nodded. “I don’t know all the words of the story, but I remember how it starts from when my dad read the book to me as a little girl.” The little Gnome smiled, and began at the beginning as Pixyl moved close and put her head on Callie’s arm. “In a hole in the ground there lived a Hobbit…”