37 AL: GRANDMOTHER

Grandmother walked to the east end of the green, where the steel and glass walls of the structure rose up to the sky, before picking a tree for the night. She chose an evergreen that possessed a strong central trunk with small perpendicular branches. Deciduous trees with their wide meandering branches were much more comfortable to rest in but they usually hosted a variety of unwelcome guests. The smaller side branches of the evergreen usually only supported small animals that spent their lives in the canopy.

She scaled the trunk to where the branches started with the help of a rope. She threw it up over a low branch and drew it up behind her when she reached it. Once she chose her spot for the night, she used the rope to secure herself to the tree well enough she wouldn’t roll over and fall out. It was still loose enough that she could use her staff to defend herself from small interlopers. If something larger appeared she would have to cut herself free before deciding whether to run or fight.

She used the same cord she used to disguise the staff to secure it to her belt. She fished another cord out to secure her pack. She got out some cold rations and leaned back against another branch as she ate them.

It was only after her food was gone that she realized she hadn’t taken the hunter's greens off. Their color had passed a rather grayish brown and was now showing traces of bluish violet. It took a great deal of acrobatics to get them off while remaining tied to the tree but she refused to climb back down. She folded them up and stuffed them into the bottom of her pack. She wondered if she should just sell them, since they didn’t seem to have much life left as a disguise. Maybe she should have let that shopkeeper try to dye them.

The exercise drew her attention to the leathers she wore. They were rather worn. Since they weren’t integrated she couldn’t just take them to a shop and have them repaired. She considered if it would be easier to patch them or craft a new set. Either way she would need materials.

It was an uneventful night. She was only forced to kill two squirrels before the rest of the scurry decided she wasn’t to be bothered. They scampered off to the west. A large animal moved through the underbrush behind them. It sniffed around the base of her tree but gave up trying to climb the trunk quickly and slunk off after the squirrels.

Grandmother slid back down to the ground in the morning using her rope. The fresh scrapes in the tree's bark looked like they were made by a bear. There was no sign of it in the underbrush. She headed north paralleling the structure's wall. She kept under the trees for cover but close enough to the wall so she could spot any entrances.

She found an apple tree full of fruit. She fell to the temptation of the bright pink fruits and climbed the lower branches to gather some. She pulled one of the gathering bags she kept for just such opportunities out of her pack. It was integrated and would keep the fruit in a pristine condition far longer than should be possible.

Her bag was about half full when she heard snorting coming from the east. She secured her belongings in the branches. She checked to make sure her camouflage spell was still active. She picked up her staff, which she kept near at hand and calculated how she would jump from the tree if it became necessary.

A boar emerged from the undergrowth. It was dragging its tusks in the dirt as its nose followed the scent of the fallen apples. Boars were well known to be almost blind and hunt by scent. The camouflage spell would have little effect on it. They were omnivores. When it ran out of apples it would try for her. She harbored a deep dislike for the boars. She didn’t feel like sitting in a tree for three days waiting for it to move on.

She dropped out of the tree. She used her increased agility to rotate in the air and land on the ground facing the beast. With her left hand she cast rooted while with her right hand she cast ice spear. Ice formed along the length of the staff transforming it into a spear.

The boar snorted, raised its head and charged. Grandmother got the impression it was only pretending interest in the apples and targeted her all along. The digging claws on its feet threw dirt as it screamed its intent. She aimed for the spot just below the jaw but above the breast bone. It was the sweet spot on the animal and could kill it instantly if she did it right.

The instant the beast made contact with her weapon she released the rooted spear. She jumped to the right, throwing up a shield of force to the left to deflect the tusks away from her. The rooted spell failed under the force of trying to stop that much momentum. Grandmother was happy the spell failed instead of the weapon. The animal probably weighed four or five hundred pounds. The boar dropped to its belly and slid to a stop.

Grandmother stood still searching for any sign of life. Her knife was in her hand although she didn’t recall drawing it. Three minutes later, she inched forward and reached out to just barely touch the animal’s leg.

Control granted her the kill. A small pile of dark coins appeared along with an integrated skin. It looked like the minimum payout. She waved accept. She never knew when she might want something to trade. After a quick inspection she returned her knife to its sheath. Control was never wrong about a kill.

She considered the carcass before her. Normally she would just leave it. The forest would recycle it in days if not hours. Unlike the animal it was named for, the meat had a nasty flavor to it. If she was short on food she would prefer to eat the squirrels from last night.

She was just thinking about needing materials for new leathers. The hide on this beast would serve very well. The tusks were impressive and there were many uses for ivory. She worked her way around the beast and grabbed the end of her staff. She reversed her grip and cast force tap to pull it free. She cleaned the gore off the staff using a handful of loose debris off the forest floor. She set it in easy reach before pulling her knife to begin the skinning process.

Eventually she got the hide off. She was highly skilled in skinning. Even though she struggled with shifting the animals weight, the finished product was excellent. She packed it into another gathering bag. She barely got it in. The integrated bag contracted as if it fought with its contents. She settled for a half bag of apples.

She could carry a lot more weight than your typical tier zero human but the skin and the ivory was pushing her limits. She thought about dropping the ivory but decided against it at least for now.

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It was getting late, most of the morning was past. She hoped to make it to the next green by sunset, now she wasn’t certain there was time left in the day. It wasn’t impossible to spend the night in the halls but it was a lot more trouble. She set out at an even pace that she thought she could maintain. It was only a few minutes walk before she came upon a ground level exit. She stepped off the soil of the green and onto the slick tile of the corridor. She proceeded with caution. These ground level entrances often attracted larger animals from the green looking for a place to nest.

The next green area was higher up and almost directly east. Grandmother took every stair she found. By midafternoon she climbed thirteen stories and was feeling a little winded. The last stairwell dumped her out in a corridor that ran north-south. She chose north. Her passage was pretty swift so far. There was only the occasional rat to frighten off.

She was starting to worry that she traveled too far and was going to miss the green. She was thinking about turning around and trying the other direction when she finally spotted a right hand branch ahead. She turned the corner and came up short against a glass wall with glass doors. There were two kinds of glass in the structure. Common glass that broke under enough force and structure glass that didn’t seem to break ever. Doors were always structural glass, while windows and glass walls could be either.

This was unexpected. Glass doors were rare. Solid doors were common. Many of the rooms she passed had a solid door. People liked solid doors. Closing one made people feel safe. No one ever seemed to think about the fact that you couldn’t see what was on the other side, regardless of which direction you were traveling. And everyone seemed to forget that the door wasn’t the only way in.

Tier two settlements were equipped with glass doors at the entrances. Tier three settlements could get double glass doors. She saw a glass door on a tier four rest area far to the south of here. It was deep, almost forty stories down. The bears in the area walked upright and carried short swords and crossbows. She killed one more by luck than skill. When she skinned it there was circuitry embedded in its muscles.

She fled. That rest was the only reason why she was still alive. She never went that far again, knowing she could not survive those beasts alone.

She peered through the glass. The other side didn’t look like a safe rest. It looked like a gallery. Gallery’s were rare. They were rarer than rests or even squares. There were more of them when they first arrived. If no one visited often enough they tended to disappear.

She pushed open the door and stepped inside.

With the door still open she scented the air. It was clean and fresh. Bright light filled the area from the ceiling three stories above her. She listened carefully. She could hear the slight splash of water from a fountain. She waited several minutes. Nothing changed. She allowed the door to close behind her. She dropped her pack, bags and ivory. She checked her knife and returned it to its sheath. She held her staff in both hands and considered the room in front of her.

Gallery’s were long thin spaces with tall glass and steel walls that were usually opaque. Sometimes the windows were transparent, giving you views into the rooms behind the closed doors of the halls. Gallery’s usually held sanitary facilities attached on one side. If you were lucky they could have a food service. There were chairs and couches in artistic little clusters set around tables that held pieces of art. Or at least Grandmother thought they were art. At the far end would be another entrance. In the center a section of one of the walls might be stone and it might have an inscription on it.

She could see the first cluster of seating. Oddly the little table they were arranged around was empty. Beyond that was a potted plant. The plant blocked some of the view beyond and made her nervous.

She edged around it and found another seating arrangement, again the table was empty. The first set of furniture was set to the right but this one was to the left. On the right was a doorway leading into what looked like a standard sanitary facility. There was another seating arrangement staggered to the right. After it she found two more potted plants, one on each side and a set of three steps.

Grandmother climbed the steps. This was the center section. Instead of one of the side walls being stone, there was a short stone wall freestanding in the center of the room. She was looking at it end on. It was sitting closer to the left wall than the right and had a slight curve to it. Not wanting to get trapped in the smaller space on the left, she approached it on the right. As she got near she realized the wall was rising up out of a small pond. A small spray of water emerged from in front of the center of the wall's curve. She was surprised to see small fish in the pool. They were almost metallic in their coloring; gold, silver and bronze. The remaining space was filled with more seating orientated to allow easy viewing of the wall.

The wall held an inscription. It was in the pictographic style that was one of the hardest to interpret. Agatha called it Egyptian. She found only one small section of the type recorded on the tapes. She never figured out what the value the few symbols revealed in the image held.

This one was much more advanced. It contained a full set of symbols. Most of the whitespace was deleted and the limitations of rows and columns removed. The symbols were colored and not a single color but multiple colors each. It would take Grandmother some time to decode it. Unlike the simple examples, it would involve math.

She decided to check the remaining space first. Past the standing wall another set of three steps led down. The east end of the gallery held a similar array of sitting areas. The door on its right wall led to a food service and preparation area.

At the far end of the gallery was another set of glass doors. They opened up onto a typical hall with stone walls, closed doors and flickering lights.

As she headed back to the center she realized she didn’t check behind the free standing wall. She moved with caution into the narrow space. The back of the inscription wall held a prize altar. The outer wall held a series of shelves and cubby holes. Grandmother had seen them in other places but she didn’t know what they were for. She thought they might just be decor like the art on the tables.

She fetched her heavy items from the west door and moved them up to the raised center seating area. She settled onto a chair and studied the inscription. Her eyes were drawn down to the fountain in the pool. A series of waterspouts were shooting short water jets in a leftward circle. The shots of water were breaking against a crystal that floated half in and half out of the water. The spray then rained down into the pool.

Grandmother sat upright and leaned forward to get a closer look at the crystal. It looked very much like a protection crystal and not the small seed protection crystal you might find in a rest either. It was at least the size of her head. There was really only one way to tell.

She fished a small piece of dried meat out of her pack and tossed it into the pond. It was a quick check that the pond really contained water and not some kind of acid that would burn her. She wondered if the fish were metallic colored because they were made of metal. The meat settled to the bottom of the pool, where it drew the attention of some of the fish. They nibbled at it, adding to the evidence that they were living creatures. Although it begged the question of what they usually ate in the tile lined pool.

She decided to limit her exposure to both the water and the fish. She tied her rope around the heaviest piece of furniture and used it to brace herself as she leaned out over the pond and reached out with one finger to touch the crystal under the spray of water.

From the point of contact color flooded the protection crystal turning it a deep rich violet. Control granted her the discovery. A large pile of bright coins appeared and something that looked very much like a miniature version of protection crystal before her. Grandmother had never seen that before. She received the discovery bonus for plenty of rest crystals but they did not grant ownership. She touched settlement crystals to demonstrate the color of her magic but those were all discovered by someone else. Grandmother wondered if they were all already owned.

She made a wave gesture to accept the reward and settled down on the couch. A protection crystal that size would provide full protection. The first thing she was going to do was take a nap.