Chapter 18: When in Rome
A week passed of frenetic yet structured training. As Redell assured her, the skill book accomplished what Nara thought impossible—it provided the foundation for competence in movement and combat. She still wasn’t anything special, just a jester mimicking the masters. At a glance, anyone could tell she was a beginner. The discerning could even tell she had used a skill book.
In her spare free time, she had taken to practicing her new lute at the lakeside. Chelsea agreed that learning music was a great mental exercise, and Nara relished her early improvement. She had no skill book to boost her mastery, but she had no need for it.
She knew she had played music before. She could feel it in her soul, literally. As she played, she recalled memories tangential to music. Wandering through the astral picking up the threads of memories was a Sisyphean act of futility; A single week in reality had accomplished more than her feverish journey through the unreality as a lost soul.
The sheet music of Erras was different than Earth, but she picked up reading it easily enough. Redell found some appropriate sheet music for her, and she worked through each piece. Sitting by the lakeside and strumming the lute, Nara fancied herself as the quintessential image of a fantasy bard.
“If only I had a feather in my cap and a cloak to catch the wind,” she hummed in a sing-song voice, to the tune of her song.
As she hummed and played merrily, she suddenly felt a change in the ambient magic.
It was small, a localized aurora borealis of rainbow light. In hung in the air like a floating spiderweb, an almost gaseous swirl of multicolored magic. The magical anomaly was a few feet from her, and she immediately backed away in curious suspicion.
She placed her lute in her inventory, her fingers slipping past the dimensional membrane into her domain. She could store the lute with a thought, but liked the theatrics of the physical action. If she overdid it, Amara would chastise her for the inefficiency. If she was in a magic world, she may as well look cool.
She tapped a magic bracelet on her wrist, activating it. It was another project Amara was working on—a way to communicate at a distance; It was the only large scale project in size that Amara was working on. It required a large-scale array to work, so the project was still in its inception, but it held the possibilities of long-scale communication. Erras had other methods of distance communication, but they were leagues behind Earth’s satellites and cell towers.
“Uh…Amara, there’s some sort of rainbow light cloud right in front of me.”
In a flash, Amara was beside her. Nara didn’t even have enough time to be startled. Nara didn’t know if it was teleportation, or something else. Amara had the combination of Lightning, Potent, and Might Essences for the Onslaught Confluence. It could have easily been a lightning-speed movement ability or pure speed of gold rank. She still didn’t understand what gold rankers were able to accomplish.
“Aha!” Amara exclaimed joyously, “This must be your first magical manifestation.”
“Magical manifestation?” Nara remembered what she had been told about monsters. “It’s not a monster, is it?”
“Not to worry,” Amara explained. “The size and strength of this manifestation is not enough for it to be a monster. It is probably an awakening stone.”
Since Amara had assured her it was safe, Nara conjured a seat to sit in and watch. Her Astral Domain ability allowed her to create astral constructs. They were so weak as to dissipate with almost any damage or impact, so it wasn’t combat useful, but it was life useful, and that was the best kind of useful. She could also store chairs in her inventory, so she was double dipping on convenience. What did that say about her?
The coalescing rainbow magic finally gathered, forming into an awakening stone that fell onto the grass with a thump, now subject to the pull of gravity.
Nara plucked the awakening stone from the ground.
“It’s an awakening stone of song,” Nara said, showing the stone to Amara. “Should I use it?”
“I would,” Amara said.
“Isn’t that too arbitrary? Literally picking up stones off the ground and using them?”
“It’s true, we shape our abilities with our selection of awakening stones. However, I believe in the compelling power of fortune and chance. That stone has formed by your influence, and your experience with it is linked. And…we find a lot of stones on the ground and use them. They’re far more common than essences. My mother once had an awakening stone of cloth manifest in her undergarments. My brother-in-law found an awakening stone of blight in a toilet.”
“…Not a clean toilet, evidently.”
“Not a clean stone either.”
“What in the world did he eat?”
At some point, Chelsea had joined the two in the observation of the stone. Nara hadn’t sensed her approach either, so she gave up on trying. She didn’t have a fun awakening stone story to share, but opted to refocus the conversation back to important matters.
“What Amara means that unconventional awakening stone selection is beneficial to ability sets. Over-engineering ability sets results in predictable abilities.”
“You agree with me?” Amara said, her smile widening into a teasing grin.
“Yes, Amara, I agree with you,” Chelsea said as if he hated to admit it, “Go ahead and use the stone.”
She did, the freshly manifested stone dissolved into powder that seeped into the skin of her hand. The lifespan of the awakening stone had not even surpassed a mayfly.
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-You have used [Awakening Stone of Song].
-You have awakened Harmonic Essence Ability, [Overture]. You have awakened 3 of 5 Harmonic Essence Abilities.
Ability: [Overture]
Spell (boon, magic)
Incantation: “Song rises from within.”
Cost: Moderate mana
Cooldown: 1 minute
Effect (Iron): Applies or refreshes the duration of [Crescendo]. This ability can only be cast on self.
* [Crescendo] (boon, magic): Periodically applies an additional instance of each stacking boon on self. This effect cannot be dispelled while any other instance of a boon is in effect.
-------
“That solves some issues,” Nara said thoughtfully. “My invigorating triple boon is annoying to accrue and maintain, and this speeds up the benefit I get from Integrity.”
Boons were temporary, so at some point they’d start to degrade in instances. If the automatic stacking was higher than the natural degradation, at some point she’d reach the maximum for each boon.
“An ability to stack boons and an ability to stack afflictions,” Amara said. “Your abilities are creating a power differential between you and your opponent. That’s good. It’s a powerful tactic.”
“Are you implying I need the help?”
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
Amara grin was confirmation.
“It’s still too early to tell,” said Amara. “But your ability set may be a skirmisher or a duelist, or a combination of both.”
Nara could more or less guess which each meant. A skirmisher employed hit and run tactics to inflict damage. Her Dimension Node ability afforded her great mobility and a path of escape. On the other hand, close range teleportation also made her a melee combatant that was hard to catch. For now, it was all speculation. Twenty abilities covered a lot of ground. Essence users weren’t fixed into one role and usually dabbled in a few, multiclassing.
*****
Over the course of the week, Chelsea and Laius had alternated using their portals to teleport Nara as far as their portals could carry her. Portals had range limits, dependent on rank, and cooldowns dependent on distance.
From the important cities they portaled her to, Nara extended her own reach by the technique she called astral jumping, slipping from location to location within her line of sight. She couldn’t jump as far as her vision; only as far as she could make out a clear target. That meant that empty plains were more difficult to traverse.
One of the locations she enjoyed visiting was a relaxed beachside town called Aviensa, within the Rona Kingdom. It was located around Spain, facing towards a sea similar to the Mediterranean, called the Tier-Meridian.
The temperature was still chilly, the month had slipped into the third month, or March. In the summer months, the locals dressed in colorful breezy clothing decorated with tassels and ribbons. While the weather was still cool, they robed themselves with heavier fabrics that extended down to their knees. The robes still adopted their preference for bright colors and pastels, a stark contrast to the norms of cold weather wear in drab western fashion.
The air was breezy and salty, but it contained a pleasant tickling chill that Nara liked. Since her torturous stay in the astral, she wasn’t particularly hard to please on the matter of weather. Any sense of sensation was a good sensation, whether it be sweltering heat or the pings and pinches of freezing cold reddening her nose like Rudolph.
The buildings in Aviensa were low and flat and made of a sand-colored stone. Linen fabrics formed colorful awnings propped up by stilts of wood. Some doorways were covered by heavy fabric that kept out the wind, and others of wood doors. Behind glass windows were colorful fabric curtains, which were closed to keep the warmth in and the cold out.
The town sloped downwards towards the chilly blue ocean, built in tiers from the incline. There was no large trading port like Sanshi, just simple wooden piers where small leisure crafts and fishing vessels bobbed gently in the early spring sea.
A recording crystal floated beside Nara, documenting her involuntary holiday trip to another world.
“Table games are popular in Aviensa,” Nara explained to the crystal, doing as best she could as a tour guide with no group, “There’s almost always a table game table in every shared courtyard. I’ve heard that you may be able to find a table game alcove off the beaten path, where people bet in friendly games.”
Nara was dressed in the local clothes, something she had bought with some spirit coins given to her by Chelsea.
“When in Rome…dress as the romans do.”
She snacked on some skewers she purchased off a food cart. It wasn’t beef: Erras did not have traditional cattle, but it struck similar flavor notes to beef. It was fattier and juicer, maintaining its juices well despite being fully cooked. It was like a beefier version of pork belly; too indulgent to eat much of.
“The seller called it bolo meat. Let me look it up.”
She had also purchased an animal encyclopedia in Sanshi. She flipped through it, scanning pages for the name of the animal. She could use her Guide to peruse the book, but she liked the sensation of paper on her fingertips. The astral had made her a very tactile person. She didn’t know if she’d still like video games and tv shows in the same way she had before.
The bolo had an abnormally tiny head compared to its large, comically round body. It looked like a child’s drawing where the head had been underproportioned or drawn as an afterthought. Four, short, trunk feet peeked out from the belly of the animal, eliciting comparisons to a car sized corgi.
“It’s main form of movement…is rolling,” she read, suppressing a laugh. “What a ludicrous, ridiculous animal. How is this evolutionarily viable?”
She recalled the koala, which sat around all day eating eucalyptus leaves, a poisonous plant that required so much energy to consume they spent 20 hours a day asleep.
“Compared to the koala…Fair enough. At least the bolo can crush enemies to death by rolling. A living, boulder trap. That’s actually sort of terrifying.”
The bolo skewers were seasoned with a crushed fruit called the cocono. It tasted similar to the coconut, but was drier fruit. The flesh was dried then ground up, and sprinkled on the meat for a delectable savory coconutty flavor.
“Simple but delicious.”
In her musings of the peculiarities of other world food, something tickled her aura senses. What she sensed was so faint it may have well been unfounded. Yet, she could not tear her attention away from it.
It was like reverse psychology, it wanted not discovery, when in turn prodded her to do the opposite. It wasn’t hostile, but a gentle, pushing force, like a mother redirecting a distracted child. Then, it changed, suddenly subtly inviting, like a person trying to bait a skittish fox. The change caught her attention.
“Now, shall we see if curiosity kills the cat?”
At least, she wasn’t talking to Wilson any longer. Was talking to a crystal any better?
Her curiosity led her to the edge of town. A stone and dirt path was shaded by leafy, low palms, creating an archway of shadow, light, and leaves. She wandered absentmindedly down the path, which widened into a hidden table game alcove. Several simple tables and chairs were set out, and locals enjoyed quiet conversation and day drinking. She couldn’t figure out what was so special about the alcove, and the strange sensation had disappeared nary a whisper in her mind, all but forgotten. Had she imagined it in the first place? She had a feeling it was aura related, but she didn’t have the mastery nor rank required to give herself an answer.
She conjured a chair, impossibly comfortable by virtue of magic. There was a table with an open spot, but it didn’t feel right to intrude into a private gathering. She turned off the recording crystal, and settled into one of the several astral magic books she was working through from Amara’s library that she duplicated with her conjuration powers.
This wasn’t so bad either. A relaxing book in a shaded alcove, and a backdrop of soft laughter and the shuffling of cards and tiles. Others who were not playing also sat in low woven chairs, enjoying their own reading while sipping on fruity mixed drinks. She told herself she blended in.
She had made significant progress in her astral magic theory book. She’d need to go back and review some parts with Amara and Chelsea—both were excellent options to discuss magic with. Astral magic was the magic of dimensions. She suspected it may be an integral part of her return to Earth. Astral magic was to magic what quantum mechanics was to physics—one of the most esoteric fields of study in this world.
Nara struggled with advanced physics such as electromagnetism, but managed to get by in college. She was no genius at it. Thankfully, her experience in the astral and access to her astral domain lent her some hands on experience that bolstered her understanding of the field. She was still at the lower levels, for now. A high school level of understanding in the field. But astral magic was rarely researcher, she may have been underselling herself.
“Young lady, if you’re going to read, you may as well join us.” A smooth and deep voice that reminded her of dark roasted coffee and wood smoke shook her from her study.
The man that called out to her had swarthy skin and eye-catching deep emerald eyes. Thick dark brown hair, almost black, a full beard, and stalwart and noble features conjured the likeness of Oscar Isaac playing Leto Atreides from Dune, except that he was taller and more muscular, reminding her of Redell in physique.
“I haven’t played before,” she responded. “Is that all right?”
“It’s too late to back out now,” A woman from the table cackled, “You may as well join us.”
She stored away her book, preserving her notations. She could always make a fresh new copy, so she didn’t mind marking it up.
“Sorry for the intrusion,” Nara said, settling into a chair across from the man.
“I am Sezan,” The man who had invited her over said.
“Wisteria,” The woman said.
“Enciodes. Call me Encio.”
The last to speak was a young man, around the same age as her, with the same dark brown hair, copper-brown skin, and gorgeous emerald eyes as the man who had invited her over. His features were a touch more delicate, but still masculine enough to avoid androgyny. His hair was medium length, and tied into a short ponytail. Wavy locks of dark brown framed his face combined with a beauty mark beneath his right eye created an effortlessly alluring appearance.
The woman, Wisteria, was an older lady, but with casual grace and beauty. She matched the three, like a seasoned actress to her other two co-stars.
High rankers were beautiful, Nara remembered. She wondered what rank the three were. She recalled Laius’ warning, but none of them were hostile. He said to beware of them, not to avoid them entirely. She was iron rank; she fundamentally could not avoid those higher rank than her. It was also possible that they were beautiful normals, they certainly existed. The only aura she could sense was Encio’s so that was not the case: he was of iron rank. Logically, the other two had to be higher rank than her, especially since Sezan looked like Encio’s dad.
“I’m Nara. It’s nice to meet the three of you.”
She matched the other three, without introducing her new last name.
Wisteria gestured to the center of the table, where gold spirit coins were placed in the pot.
“You have money to bet, dear?”
“I’m afraid this table is too expensive for me.”
“Then, something else to bet?”
She thought for a moment about the objects she had within her inventory. Her sword—she would not bet. An assortment of clothes, snacks from Laius, her lute, and some souvenirs she had purchased from other cities.
“I have some snacks on me. And I can play the lute. I’ve only been at it for a week though. I’m afraid it’s not up to par.”
“That’s good enough,” Wisteria said. “If you win, you can take the money.”
“Don’t bet your snacks if you like them,” Encio said. “She’ll take you for all your worth.”
“I wasn’t under any impression that I, someone who doesn’t even know the rules to the game, would take home any win. I’m afraid a shoddy song will have to do as penalty. It may be more punishment to your ears than it is to me.”
“If it’s too bad I will kick your bum back to the sideline, and you can go back to reading that boring old astral magic book of yours.”
“You could tell from there?”
Two long fingers gestured to her pale blue eyes.
“I have very good eyesight. Nothing slips past me.”
“The eyesight of a thief,” Encio said bitterly. “I’ve been robbed.”