The white flash of the portal cleared and the windshield of the yet-to-be-named truck shifted to the pink sky of morning on another world. Out the window was scrub grass on dry soil, making him wonder if all the portal had done was just turn them around. The biggest change was that they had shifted from morning to the moment of sunrise, the sun painting both dry plants and mesas near them bright orange as it crested the horizon.
Nyxion slowed down as Wick hopped out of her bunk and leaned over Spears-Like-Water's shoulder to start tapping at a screen. Spears, not wanting to be in the way, slid through Wick with what looked like a casual Flow-Like-Water and moved to stand next to Corvayne.
“She is very direct with what she wants.” The spear woman remarked.
Corvanye nodded. “I've been trying to take notes from her. I love her.”
Spears smirked a little before she spoke. “It's still very odd to hear you say that, you were so terse and bitter... sorry, I shouldn't speak of you such. Hopefully you'll be as proud of yourself as you deserve to be.”
Corvayne shrugged. “I don't know about that. I lost to everyone at the village. I'm glad I have you and other heavy hitters like Grunt along, to be quite honest.”
Nyxion spun and hopped off the drivers seat. “Yes, I was telling her about our adventures while we drove, and she was telling me about some of the characters in your village. Maybe we'll be there before nightfall?”
Mosh sniffed. “We have no freaking idea what planet we are on. For all we know that nice sunrise is through Carbon Dioxide and if we rolled down the window we'd all asphyxiate.”
“I can tell you it isn't mine or Cascadia. There's three moons.” Corvayne tapped the window.
Wick drummed the console. “Hey! Good news. Mud-Standard atmosphere. We can breath out there, though the air is a little cooler than Cascadia. Still let's be fucking smart about exploring a possible alien planet.”
Mosh laughed at that. “You mean like, don't barbeque creatures you don't know and eat them?”
Wick swatted at Mosh with the hem of her robe. “Things like not bringing shit back aboard if we don't know where it's from. Saying 'durr it's just a weird itch' or something when you get stung by an alien wasp. Things like not checking our lights battery backups. Taking off environment suits in a hostile alien ruin. Not telling anybody you took your suit off and something humped your mouth. You know.”
Spears looked confused. “I don't think there's anything that can properly metabolize my body unless they turn the normality effect back on somehow.”
Mosh nodded. “Ah, the HAF Geneticist guild really cooked up some winners in it's day.”
There was a knock on the door into the cab and Wick spun and stomped over. “Now, which IDIOT in there thought it was okay to leave before we gave an all-clear that this planet is safe? I'm going to wring their neck!”
Hari came into the cab with a blast of cold air, wearing a thick wool coat.
Wick started to sputter incoherently but Hari just kissed her then turned to Corvayne.
“I know where we are! We're on Nel Ferral, probably up on the high plains! If we find the high road, I can show you where I grew up!” She started tugging at Corvayne and he let her take him out onto the bridge between the cab and the back of the truck. She was pointing at the moons as Corvayne started to sip from his canteen.
“That's Ellia, Dawnward, and The Interloper gleaming between them! I wanted our wedding to be under a diamond moon like this!”
Corvayne spit water, then sputtered and coughed. “Wait wait slow down our-”
Hari laughed and nudged him. “You two are so easy to fuck with! I love you!”
Corvayne looked down at her. She might have been joking, but something about how she was looking at him suggested a kernel of truth. On the other hand, he probably could listen to her swear in Elvish for at least fifty years before it got old.
Corvayne nodded. “I am easy to mess with. Since you're up here, should we have you help navigate then? After all you know-”
Hari waved her hands. “I would be as useless as a tree without leaves! No idea where we are, the high plains take a month to cross on horse or those birds The Empire uses. No, I wanted you to ride in back with us! They are teaching me Cascadian Card games!”
Corvayne waved his hand around. “But the adventure-”
Hari looked past him. “Mosh! You have tool, err, you have a device that map everything, right?”
Corvayne looked over his shoulder to find she said it to the shut door, but a voice came out of a speaker somewhere. “Yep. We are going to switch it up anyway. I wanted to sleep before you guys start breaking crap. Mister I is going to drive for a while with Grunt Co-piloting.”
“Crap? I thought camp was word for tent...”
“No, breaking our crap is the same as sayin' breaking our stuff.” Mosh sighed over the intercom.
Hari did a little bow. “Okay thank you Mosh. Oh! You need to hide, all goblins are bad goblins here.”
There was some swearing from the radio at that.
They had to take a step back as Wick came out, dressed in her usual camo attire under her sky blue robe but with a hat and mittens that were both a little too big for her. “Taking readings!” She barked, then strode past them and climbed up to the top of the truck.
He wasn't sure how Grunt could get in and out of the seat, but Corvayne had to make way for his friend as he walked to the cab. After watching Grunt pop into the door sideways, he felt Hari take his hand and she lead the way into the door. Corvayne followed her down a few steps to the lounge, which was really sort of like a pair of horseshoe shaped restaurant booths. Gary was dealing and as clumsy as the man was at many things, his hands smoothly dealt cards out.
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Reaper-of-Fish waved. “Hey hey! It's the spear-man himself. You ever play Spaceman poker?”
Corvayne shook his head at the one-eyed security guard. “I know of poker, how is spaceman poker different?”
Reaper grinned. “Well man, unless you're on Mud you're a space man. Lady Blood Claw, if we get Corvayne in, you in sweetheart?”
LBC was in the other table, her little squid resting on her lap as she laid along the padded seat, reading a book and not looking up. “He's not going to play unless Hari lets him. Also I never play bluffing games.” Her skin flashed a bunch of colors in rapid succession and her pet did the same, neither moving despite the rainbow of patterns playing across them.
Corvayne shrugged. “Right.”
“Maybe later! Corvayne and I are busy!” Hari called back as she lead the way to the work bench, where Horton was examining components.
Corvayne slowed his walk, looking back at the card game. “Wait, I thought that was the whole point-”
Horton stopped what he was doing as they walked past and held up a hand. “Hari, I had a question but you left.”
Corvayne gave her hand a little tug. Hari stopped and turned. “Okaaaaay.”
Horton held up two fingers. “One, does this world have UFOs?”
Hari turned back to Corvayne and in elvish asked him a few questions before turning back to Horton.
“Definately. Called NMF. Non-Magical-Fliers. Glittering craft that sometimes follow people on the ground. Can't be seen with scrying, and nobody has ever seen them attack anyone, so sages think it's just drunk peasants. Or like clouds, just something that's there. Don't get too excited they are rare.”
Horton beamed. “Yes! I need you to...” The man stopped and looked upwards a moment. “I mean, I would appreciate if you could direct us to images and accounts... I have theories about those objects and I always wanted to hear how pre-industrial societies looked at them and if they act different if they know there's not video!”
Hari smiled. “I was surprised that non-magical societies had them too.”
Horton nodded. “Common ground. Second question, can we meet other elves?”
Hari rolled her eyes. “Inevitably? Yes.”
With that she pulled Corvayne over to the kitchen car, passing in the coupling area Mister I who was steaming and had a towel around his neck. Brines and Seru were in the kitchen beyond that, doing dishes together, with Brines giving Corvayne a sudsy wave and Seru dragging a trail of soap into her cleavage and winking. Hari laughed and shouted, “Bad!” at her.
“You're the one checking out the big shower.” Seru countered.
Corvayne was a little confused as Hari pushed him over to the large shower room.
“What?” Corvayne asked as Hari shut the door and locked them inside.
“You smell, you're tired! Shower, Sex, Sleep.”
“What about the new world?” He was on an adventure! He wanted to be up at the front while they drove! He... He had been awake a long time. But, a new world!
“You helped drive us here. Also, this is an old world. Boring. Sleep while we try going east.” Hari had taken her coat off and was removing her sneakers, a very un-elf like accessory on top of her wearing jeans.
“But-”
Hari huffed and switched to elvish, the lyrical words sounding a little sharp as she spoke rapid fire. “Do not put your head up a goat's ass! Resting is part of the job! Not just you, I need rest before we run into people, so I'm clear headed when I have to deal with The Empire!”
Corvayne stopped taking his shirt off. He couldn't help feel a hint of excitement. “They the bad guys?”
“No. They are idiots in charge who are letting everything fall apart, but they are better than the other guys. I am going to have to talk to every patrol and answer questions about truck when we get close to civilization. The same questions every patrol. So I need to be in a good mood! Make me cheery Hari so I do better.”
Corvayne shrugged then helped Hari with the rest of her clothes.
Showered and... the other one, twice over, Corvayne had 'cheery Hari' next to him reading her book under the covers with him. Corvayne had set the virtual window in his little sleeping closet to a star-field, which helped make the small space feel less claustrophobic. The truck had started moving again and he could feel the bed rock a little as they ran over bushes and divots and boulders. He had the radio turned to a low volume to hear if he was needed, voices mostly reporting little things they saw. Mostly it was just Wick, who had decided to perch herself in the gunner seat on top of the truck for this leg of the trip, yammering about readings. Corvayne had worried but Hari assured her there were no birds like rocs out far from more verdant spaces that could actually support the huge predators.
Hari studying the catalog reminded him that he had some reading he wanted to do, namely the two books that The Magus's mother had given him under the library along with the quest to kill her son. Ironically, the request eased up some of the ire he had from the weird man cursing him. That all aside, the books were supposedly aids to help him succeed in following some sort of pilgrimage, recovering his memories, then undoing his curse. All things he was becoming more interested in, but there was the problem of reading them: If he took them out the books from his ring they would start liquifying in the air, damaging the contents and possibly harming anyone who ended up inhaling the book-gas.
Mosh had made a prototype clear plastic vacuum box that he could stick his hands into. Given that it hurt his hands to have exposed to an vacuum, Corvayne found that he could take about five minutes of reading before he had to magically store the book and let his hands rest and deflate. So he pulled the box out of his storage ring and placed it on the covers, undid the screw cap on one side and put one hand into one of the rubber rimmed holes, then used his free hand to press the button on top to tighten the seal. Pressing it again started the vaccum, and a third time would release everything. Mosh had cobbled together something with the idea that if he needed both hands, he could tap the button with his nose.
Turning it on Hari nearly jumped out of bed and actually hissed a little like a cat.
“I hate those things!”
“What?!” Corvayne had to shout a little.
“Stupid noisy brooms!”
Hari glared at the machine and then glanced at the door, clearly torn between leaving or putting up with the ungodly noise for the minute it took to get the interior near airless. She covered her ears for the minute it took to get most of the air out of the contraption, relaxing as the whine of the engine stopped. Corvayne then flicked the book from storage into his hand and carefully opened it. He could turn the pages with a single hand but rather than risk dropping the book he chose to abuse his shadow limbs, snaking one out of his wrist to help turn the pages.
With his non ring hand he took his phone and pulled up the camera, then took pictures of each set of pages with high settings. It was a clunky way to do it, but as a result he could share the book with Wick and make notes of what the translated sections meant.
The pages he had captured earlier in the week from the summoning book proved more popular with Wick, partially because they had seen the results of using the book poorly under the library, and partially because it was full of weird pictures and beasts and magic circles, like a proper spell book. The introduction was 5 pages of increasingly dire explanations of what would happen if someone just tried to start doing spells in the book without proper defensive measures and careful understandings of what they were summoning. Choice phrases included: 'blasted apart like a dandelion', 'crushed like a poorly made pastry hitting the floor', 'everything removed, as if the skin was a useless container to be discarded', 'the entire river delta kills anyone who lingers for more than an hour' and '...often people think of the lesser condition of being flayed when they think of what turned inside out means'
The martial guide was far more tame, though it did have simple diagrams to show off techniques, most of which Corvayne knew. Still, he would copy the entire book and if nothing else, get a nice review of the things he had known growing up in his warrior village. The summoning work was first because Wick wanted it, and the illustrations of some of the things pulled up from the nether beyond existence looked interesting.
His hand started aching but he was close enough to the end of the book that he powered through another minute of his hand throbbing from the pressure before he put the book back into storage and hit a valve that let the air slowly fill back in then undid the wrist binding that kept it airtight. He pulled his hand free and shook it to restore feeling.
He saw Hari had fallen asleep, so he placed a bookmark in the spot she was reading and set her book on her bag, then settled in next to her and closed his eyes and got some rest as the truck rumbled east.