28: How do you find mana?
The giant wolf walked her out of the grove, licking the side of her face and chuffing his laughter at her amused outrage. «Reagent for your Cleansing skill,» he joked about the slobber sliming down her neck.
Cerise showed her palms and laughed as she followed the joking suggestion. Then she looked passed the big wolf and saw her best friend, trembling as he held himself back, eying the wolf with concern.
She was having none of that. Cerise flung herself at her best friend. "Mykhal! I have so much to tell you! I met a land god! She's incredible! She gave me a name! How are you? Could you feel I was okay? I could feel you here and it made it so much easier to not be afraid! How are Mama and Papa? Where are Mama and Papa?"
He wrapped her up in a hug and started shaking. Surreptitiously, she cast a few Stabilizes on him. By the time he released her, the moon had traveled a third of the way through its descent. She saw three tents behind him, and Heral and his cousins standing, watching them.
When Heral realized her attention was upon them, he bowed, his cousins following suit. When he rose, he said, "Miss ban Silverwood, congratulations on your elevation."
"Ah, what now?" Cerise asked.
Heral chuckled and rubbed his face. "Your Identify profile now shows you as Cerise ban Silverwood, Authority Bearer, Free Lancer, Freeman, Emancipated Youth, [Healer], Rare, Novice. We should rejoin your parents and then return to Va'Velton so I may introduce you to Hirsel Velton. That is, if you may leave these woods?"
Cerise spluttered before she got out, "Yes, I can leave, but, what?" Then she spluttered some more before asking, "Why do we need to go the hirsel?"
Heral's expression was gentle. "As an authority bearer for the Silverwood, within these woods only the King of Druerjan has legal standing to contest your edicts. Outside, Druerjan's laws afford you diplomatic status. You are not noble: you are not bound by a noble's obligation nor afforded a noble's privileges, but you will be offered the respect and courtesy due the authority you represent."
"Oh," Cerise said, having nothing better to say.
«You can stay if you want,» the leaves whispered.
"Please don't!" Mykhal asked. "Please come with us!"
Cerise hugged him again and took a deep breath. "I can't be a loyal daughter and stay, now can I? Mama and Papa need people, and there aren't many people who live well without a palisade between them and the monsters. We have only done as well as we have because of Fortuna's smile, and that is not something to disrespect by depending upon. Of course I'm going with you, Mykhal. We have a dungeon to explore!" Cerise tried to project in Sylvan Speech, «and a task to see done, Lady Whisper.»
The leaves laughed.
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They waited until sunrise to break camp.
"I made provisions for your parents to wait for us in the next town," Heral had told Cerise.
Mykhal had added, "Kaspia and Casper went back to let everyone know when the Whisper in the Leaves told us you would be safe to return with us. I asked them to use the team sense to let our folks know we're safe and when we start back to them."
"Okay," Cerise said. She had just woken from slumber and Mykhal had been on watch, so neither of them felt the need to sleep. Heral and Izrai crawled back in for sleep, but Mahayan wavered long enough for Cerise to invite the young Honorable Miss to join them.
She was a quiet girl and hesitant to speak up. She had seemed very polite before, but now she was almost meek around Cerise. Glatadia, on the other hand?
«You should ask! ... If you don't ask, you'll never know! ... Ask!»
«Ask what?» Cerise asked.
Glatadia snapped her gaze to Cerise. «You hear me?»
«The Guardian gave me Beast Speech,» She explain-agreed.
"Cerise, why are you clicking your tongue?" Mykhal asked.
She grinned and explained how when she and the Lady Whisper finished healing the Lady's Guardian, he thanked her with the gift of Beast Speech. She could hear Glatadia pressuring Mahayan to ask something.
Mykhal said, "As long as it isn't mean, you won't hurt our feelings by asking."
"Your classes, they're obviously magic classes. How did you get them?" Mahayan asked.
Cerise felt Mykhal stiffen. She smiled kindly at the young woman even as she laid a calming hand on Mykhal's. "We don't talk about our classes or skills because slavers pay well for Novices that haven't got someone to come for them, especially ones with our kind of skills. What slavers would pay for, others would extort.
"As for how we were classed, we did as most other commoners in the Northern villages do. We gave our supplicant gifts, stood in the holy place, and were judged for the skills we raised and the actions we took before that day."
Mahayan grimaced and said, "I have a friend, a pair of friends, who are in love. He is an Honorable, but close enough to the bottom to fall through as a Freeman. He classed last year as a [Mage] and now his family is trying to use him to make alliances with other Honorables who haven't had a [Mage] in a generation or two. She hasn't classed yet because she's terrified that when she does and there's no magic in her class, she won't be allowed near him anymore. I want to help my friends, not least because one of the Houses he's being offered to is my own."
"But, you are a [Mage]," Mykhal pointed out.
She grimaced. "I only classed at Mid-Summer, and we all expected I'd be a [Scribe] or maybe an [Alchemist]. Errol used the excuse of visiting with me to teach Laslyr, hoping it would help. I got a mutation for [Scribing] that let me read mana and the only choice I had in the dungeon was between [Mage] and [Rune Scribe]."
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Cerise and Mykhal looked between each other. He, reluctantly, nodded. "It was your discovery," he reminded her.
"How do you find mana? How do you study it? How do you interact with it?" Cerise asked.
"I--. I have a Mana Pool. I read the books Cousin Aleron loans me, and I use my skills. Is there another way?" Mahayan said.
"Do any of your books talk about a skill called Mana Sensing? Or a Mana Sense, like Mana Sight or Mana Hearing?" Cerise wanted to just say the answer, but hesitated and so asked questions.
"Arcane Senses, but that's a class perk. It's not .... How did you get that skill without being [Mages] already?"
Mykhal sighed. "It's Mana Sensing, not Arcane Senses. And Fortuna gifted us by pricking her curiosity on the day of her classing rites. Our holy place was a grotto and the walls glowed dimly in the tunnel leading to the grotto. No one else on their classing day would bother to stop and stare at the walls, wondering why they glowed."
"And Mykhal was with my parents to stand for me, so I told him about having to get into hunter's trance to see the bright mana there," Cerise said.
Mahayan asked, "What's the hunter's trance?"
"Empty your mind and fill it with the world around you. A lot of people think too much. They live in their heads, so caught up in what they expect that they never check if what they expect matches what really is happening around them. 'Can't feed a family on expectation, now can you?'" Cerise ended by mimicking Elder Cord.
She and Mykhal exchanged nostalgic smiles.
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In the morning, Heral and Izrai broke down the tents and stored them in pendants of Minor Holding. Cerise's Etiquette skill, though Basic, warned against examining gifts in the giver's home, so she simply shouldered the pack, the two seeds safely tucked into her belly pocket.
With everything packed up, Heral shared out trail loaf and jerkied meats. He looked to Mahayan. "What knowledge are you returning for what Miss ban Silverwood and Mister Mykhal shared with you?"
The two Freemen stilled while Mahayan spluttered, finally saying, "Eavesdropping is rude!"
"Have more care where you speak if you want your words to be private." He looked over the three of them. "This is a lesson you all apparently need to learn."
"As you say, Honorable Mister el-Treborant," Cerise agreed.
Heral returned his expectant gaze to Mahayan. She worked her mouth, not knowing what to offer. The lordling sighed and turned to Mykhal and Cerise. "I authorize Mahayan to share the books she has on loan from the Treborant kizanelium concerning [Mage] skills with you both. I suggest Mahayan teach you her scribing mutation as compensation for your shared discovery."
Mahayan brightened. "Oh, I can do that!" Then another thought drained color from her face. "You're not going to tell Mother about Errol and Laslyr, are you?"
Heral gave her a flat look. "I don't need to get in the middle of anyone's romances. If I am not asked, I will not volunteer."
They finished their cold breakfast and set out.
Where Cerise walked, the wood made way for her so that what had taken the Cousins Treborant a day's steady walk took half a day to return to the road.
Following the road saw them to a modest town named Sa'Codlan by night fall. They found Cerise's parents at an inn named the Hundred Year Stew. It was late enough that Heral just paid for rooms at the inn for them all and they ate bowls of the stew for which the inn was named.
Cerise's mother nearly suffocated her, and her father was worse. Mykhal wasn't exempt from the parental affections; he got pulled into the reunion hugs just as fiercely.
The innkeeper sidled up to Heral and nervously wiped his hands on his apron. "So, she, uh, the Miss that Miss Bergin and Mister Rhene are hugging, she's the one that was snatched up by the Silverwood's Guardian?"
Heral looked to the man. "You ask why?"
"Well, there's some as say the Silverwood's been angry, but the Guardian, he didn't really ...?" The innkeeper trailed off, clearly uncomfortable with the cold look Heral was giving him.
Heral asked, "Do you know how to use an Identify skill?"
"Eh. Um. Yes, sir?" the innkeeper offered.
"Use it. Start with the Miss. Then ask yourself how you want to be seen treating the Miss and her esteemed parents."
The innkeeper gave a weak smile, but looked at Cerise. Then he paled and mumbled his excuses as he headed out of the room.
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In the room that Cerise's parents insisted she and Mykhal share with them, she pulled the seeds out of her belly pouch and Appraised them. One was simply beyond her skill. The other, smaller seed was:
Authority of the Silverwood Grove Hamadryad
Legendary Rarity
Epic Quality
Authority is Bound to Bearer. Bearer may expend mana to summon authority. No other may possess the authority without suffering the Hamadryad's Curse. Authority may only be returned to or revoked by the issuing Hamadryad.
Authority Grows with Bearer. Currently capable of holding in stasis a volume of three bow-lengths cubed.
Allows Bearer to command the Hamadryad's woods and to carry the Hamadryad's seeds.
That was amazing! She gained an intuitive sense of how to use the artifact, because surely that and the Silverwood Surgical Needles the Lady Whisper in the Leaves gave her could be nothing less than artifacts.
Her mother started to reach for the seeds and Cerise snatched them up. "I don't know what the Hamadryad's Curse is and I don't want you to find out the hard way. You can Inspect them in my hands, but only I touch these seeds."
That earned her parental glares all around, including from Mykhal. Before the lectures could start, she said, "Inspect first! Know what you're talking about! Then tell me how you think I should have answered when the land god presented these to me."
She could feel her mother's ire only growing, but Cerise knew that she was being reasonable and that, once her mother calmed down, her mother would agree.
Her father stopped her mother from trying to snatch the seeds out of Cerise's hands when she opened them for the others to use their Inspect skills.
"No one gets to hurt my baby! No one lays any curses on her! If I have to--!" her mother, apparently, was not going to be reasonable for a while.
Mykhal said, "Oh! It's a protection! Mama, Cerise is safe!"
Her mother swung her head around at that. "What?!"
"Don't try to touch it. Just Inspect it and you'll see faster than I can say it," Mykhal promised.
Her father at least knew better than to let his wife go. Then the fury drained out of her mother, leaving tears.
They took time to be emotional together, though Cerise made sure to tuck away the seeds. An intuition warned her against putting the seed she could not identify into the holding space of her token of Authority.
Though tired and wrung out, Cerise was very curious about the canvas bag. It Appraised as:
Lesser Holding Pack
Uncommon Rarity
Rare Quality
Holding Packs are often used by explorers and small, mobile teams to transport equipment for prolonged stays away from civilization. Holds four cubic arms by volume. Rare quality bonus: items in the pack are subject to temporal storage, aging 1 day inside the pack for every 400 days outside.
Then she opened the pack, and laying on top of bundles of gear and stacks of weapons were pendants just like the ones she and Mykhal had so recently received at the Free Lancers Guild. She Appraised one.
Free Lancers Identity Token
Common Rarity
Common Quality
Bearer: Hammdal of Stalking Leaves, deceased
They were all Free Lancer Identity Tokens, and they all listed their bearers as deceased.
Cerise closed the pack and did not look any further into it.
Her family had been looking over her shoulder, Mykhal most excited of all, and now the most somber.
"Where did this pack come from?" her father asked.
"The Lady Whisper in the Leaves, the land god, said they were things men left in her woods, and asked me to take them away." She looked to Mykhal. "We'll need to take this to the Free Lancers Guild in Va'Velton.
Mykhal nodded.
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Before Cerise went to sleep that night, she checked her Profile out of habit. She wasn't up for meditating on any skills, but a quick glance at her changes was usually encouraging.
She had two open class skill slots. That was the first thing she noticed. Then she saw that her Heal Wounds, Heal Toxins, and Heal Diseases skills had collapsed into the broad Heal skill. The third thing she noticed was that her new broad skill was at Practiced-9 (Intermediate-2). She had reached level 15 and of her class slotted skills, only Slumber and Paralyze were not capped into the Intermediate rank.
She didn't know which skills she should pick to fill the new empty slots, so she held off for now on choosing. Perhaps she would unlock something new soon.