Damn it. I’d hoped we’d have more time. They weren’t ready. We hadn’t even told them...
Look, we knew this might happen. They have enough knowledge that they can handle themselves for a while. We’ll find them soon, honey
I just hope they don’t get into too much trouble. It’s a good thing they went together, at least...
----------------------------------------
“Don’t stare at them in the eyes. Animals see it as a threat,” Nia barked, “and the last thing we need is for them to think we’re hostile.”
Jules complied, his eyes wandering away from the wolves and alighting instead on what was behind them. Or more specifically, behind their legs. He spotted signs of movement, causing his pupils to dilate as he realized something new about their situation.
“... Hypothetically speaking, would we be more fucked or less fucked if this was their den.”
Nia was about to begin her explanation of exactly how bad it would be, but was cut off by the sudden emergence of a small, fluffy head in the midst of the pack. It poked out through the legs of the older wolves, tilting as it regarded them.
She noted that the head clearly belonged to a wolf-pup, its horns having barely emerged from its smaller head, though she was rather busy internally panicking over the fact that the wolves had their children with them. Unlike its kin, the pup had strange liquid glowing eyes, as if its eye-sockets were filled with some kind of luminescent tar. Despite the best attempts of the older wolves to block its passage with their feet, Nia saw the pup wriggle through and run towards the pair until it was only a few feet in front of them. It stared up at them brightly, and barked as if trying to communicate.
“Oh god it’s adorable. We’re definitely screwed, but oh god is that adorable,” she whispered.
The little bundle of fur kept barking, and the strange glow in its eyes began to spread across its body, tracing the path of surface veins and arteries. Nia saw the light reach down through the pup’s legs into the earth, before spreading out across the surface of the soil. It reminded Nia of satellite maps she’d seen of rivers, and how they branched off into deltas. The soft blue light remained on the earth for a few seconds...
And then the forest moved.
Nia could feel the earth shifting and the trees bending their branches. She turned her head to see the thorny hedge behind them reforming into an archway, through which lay the forest beyond. Nia turned back, and saw that a copse of trees by the far side of the waterfall’s glen had laced their branches and leaves together into a sort of makeshift hut.
The wolf pup then sat down expectantly, watching them curiously.
“... I think it’s asking us whether we want to stay here or leave.”
“You know what? It’s been a long day,” Jules said, “A puppy with magic forest-control powers is offering us a place to stay. Let’s just… take this at face value.”
She had no idea how he was so calm all the time. He’d always been like this. When their cat had died, Jules had just… gone to the garage and picked up a shovel, while she bawled her eyes out. Even here he was still tranquil. She noted with annoyance that he was also still as reckless as ever. She watched Jules walk forward, barely making it five steps past the pup when the rest of the pack suddenly growled. They advanced, eyeing Jules with their hackles raised.
Nia realized then that the wolves were afraid of Jules. Why, she didn’t know, but all the signs were there. They approached slowly, with caution, and she noticed one of the smallest wolves flinching when Jules stopped and raised his hands suddenly in a peaceful gesture. The wolf-pup, though, seemed unconcerned, trotting back back to its pack to yip at the largest, oldest wolf, who replied with a series of chuffs. This went on for several minutes, as Jules tapped his feet.
‘My god,’ she realized, ‘they’re sapient. They have a language.’
There weren’t many other explanations for the exchange she was seeing. The wolf-pup directed his barking towards other wolves, who seemed to acknowledge the pup’s words before visibly shrinking under the withering gaze of the eldest wolf.
Jules, thankfully, seemed to have decided to back off, retreating to the shade of the tree-hut the pup had fashioned. He rested his head against a handy tree and closed his eyes, apparently deciding to just… rest. Nia quashed the desire to join him. Eventually the pack ceased their various noises, and the wolf pup trotted out to meet them once again. Its eyes glowed and the forest shifted once more, before a line of stones emerged from the ground. It split off a portion of the glen, and she realized they were marking off the space in which the siblings could stay. Thankfully, Nia noted, the portion included a stretch of land next to the waterfall.
She sped into the siblings' side of the glen as quickly as possible, before moving over to drink from the waterfall. She cupped her hands to catch a handful, noting how it appeared crystal-clear before having a sip. It was cold and refreshing. She idly realized that it was likely melt-off from mountain snows. Though, she thought, in a world of horned wolves and glowing forest magic, it could be from anywhere el-
Something inside her clicked, with her questioning. She could feel invisible gears spinning in a space-without-space inside her, responding to her thoughts. The emerald lightning burst from her hands once again, coursing into the remaining water, before leaping back to her body.
As they returned, the lightning brought with it sudden visions and knowledge, so much knowledge her mind felt like it was boiling. She saw snowy cliffs above a craggy valley, where volcanic smoke emerged from a crater. Nia somehow knew the exact moment of the snowfall that produced the water in her hands, its source from oceans and lakes and rivers so far away. She felt every dissolved particulate in every drop. It was an incredible awareness, but incredible pain. Her mind just couldn’t handle the sheer magnitude of information frothing in her consciousness.
Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.
Distantly, she realized, she was screaming at the top of her lungs. She wasn’t standing anymore either. Lost in a deluge of information, she didn’t notice Jules dash up behind her, before feeling his arms pull up her body and drag her back to the relative safety of the hut. There was a sudden spark of purple lightning in her vision, as Jules began his own discharges as well whilst he held her, before hearing the thud of her brother falling to his own knees.
Then she heard his voice, strained and groaning.
“Compress it… Filter it…” Jules gasped like a man drowning, “Reduce…”
And so she tried. Spiralling weaves of data were flensed into nothing, endless vistas and landscapes shriveled into words. Nia could feel her brother’s mind suddenly entering her consciousness, aiding her, helping her turn the vast sea into a single drop. The boiling fog in her mind cleared, revealing the glen once again. In front of her was a holographic box, floating in the air.
Analysis: Water of the Pack’s Glen Waterfall
Originates from Snowfalls originating from [COMPRESSED DATA].
Slight Holy Attribute! Slight Nature Attribute!
Nia’s body slowly relaxed, tension in her muscles she hadn’t known was there releasing. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Jules, similarly exhausted, lying against a tree. In front of him was a similar strange box. She saw him flick a finger at it, causing it to disappear, before he closed his eyes and began to snore. With the fatigue in her bones, Nia decided to join him in slumber.
----------------------------------------
Jules’s eyes fluttered awake. The first thing he felt was a strange, soft, warm stroking at his cheek. He glanced over to see the pup from earlier licking at his face. Once it saw that he was awake, it scampered off into a burrow on the other side of the glen. Jules groggily shook his head, trying to remember what had just happened. He’d been trying to nap… Then… He’d heard Nia screaming. His eyes widened as he remembered his sheer panic at the sound. Nia, his sister, screaming.
He remembered getting up and dashing over, grabbing her and dragging her to their shelter, before trying to figure out what was wrong with her. And then the lightning… The lightning had responded to his heart. He remembered the lightning telling him that she was obtaining information from the water that had been in her hands, and that it was too much for her.
Jules felt as though it had told him something more than that, something that he’d forgotten. He couldn’t quite make it out, so he shrugged it off and continued poring over his recollections. Jules remembered that he’d been affected by the overload of data too, as it told him every single aspect of her condition. He didn’t remember much of what it’d told him now, and considering that the problem had been data-overload… that probably explained why he couldn’t remember all of what he’d received.
He’d realized that to manage the information they were receiving, they had to reduce it, make it easier to comprehend without the… pain of having it all shoved in their heads. And the system he’d come up with in the span of seconds…
‘Well,’ Jules supposed, ‘I should give it a test run.’
Jules thought a single word, trying to remember that initial feeling that had triggered the lightning within him.
‘Status.’
It was a strange feeling, like reaching out to something within arm’s reach and yet wasn't there at all. Something that reached back.
STATUS WINDOW UserID: Jules Parin LEVEL: 10 Main Class: ??? Lesser Classes Scholar, Artificier, Champion Health: 100% Mana: 30 Status Effects: ATTRIBUTES Might: 13 Agility: 17 Intellect: 20 Perception: 13 Dominion: 13 Reign: 16 Willpower: 17 Vigor: 9 CLASS SKILLS ???: Analyze Rearrange Store
Yes, he’d decided on an RPG-system. It was on impulse. It was the best he could come up with in such conditions.
‘...Okay, maybe I'd just liked the idea,’ Jules admitted to himself.
He examined the status screen, studying it. It was intriguing how all of the information the lightning could collect had been converted into such a simple form. But as he read, the more his confusion grew. It was supposed to utilize the information the strange lightning collected and translate it into a form he could understand, but what he was seeing made no sense.
Somehow, he had a class? He had mana? What the hell were these Dominion and Reign stats? He knew he'd applied an RPG-system to 'filter' the information, but that didn't explain this!
Jules was about to get up, and start trying to learn more about how all this worked, when the weight on his lap reminded him of something much more important. He looked down at his sister, panic replacing curiosity.
Had he been in time to help her? He’d tried to… interface, that was the best word he could use to describe it, with her lightning, but he wasn’t certain that it took. Jules couldn't be sure that he'd conferred the same kind of 'filter' of information to his sister in time. With the amount of information she’d been fed before he’d intervened, he had no idea if she was still alive, much less sane. Jules held out a hand over Nia’s mouth, and felt the warmth of her breath brushing his palm.
Thank god, she was still alive. He poked her in the nose to see if she woke up, smiling a little as he remembered old childhood mischiefs.
The sound of a mighty punch echoed through the glen, followed by a quiet murmur of apologies. She was still about as coherent as she normally was, as far as Jules could tell. Her punch definitely hadn’t gotten worse.