“Well?” A voice called out to Daniel as he woke up. It was a slow, echoing whisper that ended in a sigh. He opened his eyes to see a cloud before him and thought he was back on the floating island.
That lasted for only a moment. He was sitting in a padded leather chair for one. The quality was surprising to Daniel given the society he’d found himself in was a far cry from anything industrialized. That doesn’t mean they can’t have fancy chairs, he mentally compromised. There was still a cloud in front of him. They were in a humanoid shape and moved like one too, which would have completely thrown him if it were a week ago. Air gestalt? he guessed, and wondered why he hadn’t seen another. “Uh.” They had said something like it was an expectation. The last thing he remembered was squaring off against Gadriel as the man grew more and more insensible, and then a giant had run at him. “What happened?”
The figure turned their head to the side. They were mimicking human form fairly well with even a bump on the face for a nose. Blue orbs replaced the eyes and appeared as if they were open sky amidst the white. “Health?”
Daniel looked around the room for context. His first impression was that this creature was some kind of nurse. Instead of a medical tent, he was in one of the village’s buildings. The room looked like a small hunting lodge with weapons and stuffed heads predominant on the walls. He recognized a ringcat among them, displayed less prominently among the parts of stranger creatures whose whole forms he could only try to imagine. Not Ringcat, thankfully. The weapons were interesting, though not all were obvious in their method of death. A pair of gauntlets with a bulky box above each wrist, solid and smooth metal disks, and two staves connected by a large chain stood out among them.
The sky of the gestalt’s eyes was still fixed on him. Daniel didn’t feel unwell and that was probably what they were asking. “I think I’m good, thanks. Where’s my phone?” He wasn’t holding it. There was a small table next to the lounge chair but it was empty. The lightning spines were gone as well, otherwise they’d be poking into the chair.
It took the gestalt a couple of seconds to think of a reply, and it was another question. “Possessions?”
“Yes, could I have them please?” Like Thomas, this individual didn’t seem like a jailor.
“Meeting.” The gestalt nodded to accompany the word. Is that supposed to imply additional meaning? Daniel was sure there was something to gestalt he hadn’t figured out yet. The one he’d seen in the forest seemed to communicate with no issue to those that accompanied them, while he’d had all sorts of trouble.
It could just be me though. Oh, and the meeting, right. That had been the impetus for the Hero happening to him. The chair he was sitting in did feel like should belong to a Commander. “How long exactly?”
“Discover.” A pause longer than should separate words drifted in the air before the gestalt continued. “Here.” Then they departed. With nothing else to do, Daniel decided to look at the cool weapons someone had mounted like crossed swords. The gauntlets weren’t bolted to the wall, but it didn’t matter as they were too heavy for Daniel to lift. Even with magic supplementing him, they were made for someone draconoid-sized and at an odd height for him to move without really trying and endangering the wall.
He could at least make out some details. The box on top was part of the rest of the metal, seamlessly sloping up from the top side of the gauntlet and ending just before the wrist. Whatever the box was, he guessed it was a weapon of some kind. Magic flamethrower? he hoped.
The cloud returned a few minutes later to the room to find Daniel looking out of the room’s window. “Assistance?”
“I’m just thinking.” After the gauntlets, he’d noticed people moving around outside. It was late afternoon, packed streets turning into crowded ones. The Roster was a disruption in this flow like a rock in the stream. An avianoid child was one of the few who had noticed him and the only one who had waved. Like they thought I belonged here.
There were too many questions and too much to ask questions about. The world, attributes, powers, Thomas’ high blood pressure, the giant, dragons, and insufferable Heroes. And murder cats. Daniel was in the center of a whirlwind, topics flying by so quickly he couldn’t pin one down long enough to think before another displaced it. He had to pick something, even if it was at random. “Why do gestalt only speak one word at a time? If that’s not rude to ask,” he quickly added.
“Grafting?” the cloud said as if it should have been obvious. Their tone was hard to distinguish but it came through that time. “Unknown?”
Daniel shrugged. “I’m still figuring a lot of stuff out. I know a lot of people have it rough right now, but I’ve had a bad week.” Has it been a week? he thought. Most of one at least. Or, not, it’s just been three days. Damn.
“Disaster,” the cloud agreed. It was odd watching them talk. The sound just emanated from inside. There was almost an assessing tinge to the word too, making Daniel worry the gestalt was picking up his nerves.
“What’s going on with that anyway? It sounds like everyone’s moving here for something. There’s the pass out of the region, so it’s an evacuation?” Daniel was mostly talking to himself. He’d always been his best sounding board. “But why? Is no one coming to help? It seems like there are a lot of people here and you have a stone giant. I guess it could be that no one’s close enough to help before something happens.” He would have guessed at what exactly, but Daniel could only do so much with what he knew.
The cloud didn’t respond and Daniel turned back to the window. The child was gone but the crowds remained. The sun was setting behind the mountains and casting them into shadow. “Traveler?”
“Oh? Uh, yeah you could say that.” Daniel didn’t turn, which might have been rude but he was having a moment. “This place isn’t anything like where I’m from.”
“Realm?”
Realm? Daniel thought. What? That made him turn around. Maybe the gestalt was doing something to contextualize that? No, they were just standing there. Well, floating there. Were they asking if he was from another world? He’d have to make sure that was the case before just giving that little secret away. “Sorry, I don’t understand.”
The sky in the gestalt vanished as they blinked. “Home?” it tried.
“That’s pretty far. I honestly don’t know how to get there from here actually.”
“Sorry.”
“Thanks.” Daniel had dodged the extraterrestrial implications, at least. He thought about asking the cloud if they normally lived in the sky, but stopped himself before he insulted someone he was making headway with. “I’m Daniel. They might have told you that but it’s generally better for people to introduce themselves anyway.”
“Ashier.”
Is that a word I don’t know or their name? Daniel thought. I’ll go with it. “Nice to meet you, Ashier.” He remembered to smile a few seconds too late but it seemed to still go over well. He then remembered why Ashier had left in the first place. “Did you find out when the meeting’s happening?”
Ashier was about to speak when someone else did. “Now.” The answer was one word, but it came from behind the cloud and it seemed to surprise them. Lograve stepped into the room. “Sorry for the wait, Mr. Brant. The Commander is a busy man who has spent a lot of time recently on a shadefur hunt. Thank you Ashier, I’ll take him from here.” Daniel followed the tall man out, noting that while he seemed better, his scars hadn’t faded away like Daniel's had. At least the light gray robes covered most of them. The gestalt remained, and so did a feeling within Daniel that the gestalt had wanted to ask him something else.
The rest of the house reminded Daniel of mansions old movies had. There was more space than he’d think something from a small village would have and everything was sparkling clean. The color of the rugs was vibrant, a few paintings graced the walls. An open stairway led from the foyer to the front door where more of the comfortable chairs were placed for waiting guests.
“What happened after I passed out?” Daniel asked as he followed Lograve.
“Kob carried you here. Apparently you offended Sir Cross,” the tall man responded, putting a sarcastic spin on the title. “Heroes,” he scoffed. “Never know if you’ll get a bad one.”
“There are bad Heroes?”
“Well, you have met one.” Lograve grimaced but didn’t continue.
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, we have mountains to climb before that. Not literally, not yet.” He sighed. “There’s going to be some hard questions coming, Daniel. The Commander is a busy man and doesn’t have time to beat around the brushstalker. We also just finished a rather aggravating conversation but that doesn’t have anything to do with you. Answer honestly and you’ll be fine.”
Daniel’s pace slowed. “Am I in trouble?”
“Not necessarily. There have just been some irregularities. Murdon’s jumping at shadows with all the pressure on him.” He lowered his voice. “I don’t think he’s been sleeping most nights.”
“Does his endurance let him ignore sleep?” Daniel guessed.
Lograve narrowed his eyes as if Daniel had just guessed his middle name. “Don’t encourage him! And no, not to the point he’s taken it.” The two had climbed to the top floor now. In that time they hadn’t encountered anyone else, and all the doors had been closed. It seemed like the house was protecting itself from Daniel and would actively resist his passage if not warded off by Lograve.
The heart of the mansion was the office. Lograve opened the door to reveal Murdon sitting at his desk, still in his armor. There was a window, a bookcase, a chest, and not much else. The draconoid didn’t rise but gestured to the seat in front of him. He spoke in a measured voice with the barest hint of danger behind it. It made Daniel think of a teacher reminding a class about academic integrity. “Please have a seat. I am sorry you finished your journey here unconscious.”
“That giant carried me?”
“Yes.” Murdon watched Daniel as he took a seat, and placed a few items on the desk. His necklace, phone, and the bundle of sparkbat spikes. My necklace! Daniel thought. He hadn’t realized it was gone and felt guilty about that. “I believe Lograve warned you about the nature of this meeting, so I will get started. I am curious about these items.”
“I-” The tone the draconoid used wasn’t accusatory, but the mere presence of the giant man was intimidating. An ability, or just the fact that I’m talking to a freaking half-dragon? “Can I ask a question first?”
“Yes.” That time Daniel detected some gristle in the response, something that told him he was walking the line.
He should only ask one question. One question out of a sea of questions that roiled within him and threatened to spill out if he didn’t keep them down. Murdon’s dark, serious eyes helped with that. “What’s the ‘Crest’?” He’d been thinking about the map after his conversation with Ashier, if you could call it that, and remembered the white wall that formed a border to the northeast. “It seems like everyone’s moving away from it.”
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The irises, so dark that they might have been black, expanded as Murdon’s slit white pupils shrank. “The Crest? You don’t know what the Crest is?”
“My pho-, my Focus had an entry on it, but I couldn’t see the information.”
“An entry?” Lograve asked, and Murdon shot him a glare. There must have been some agreement as to who was doing the talking here and the Arcanist had quickly broken it.
“This is your Focus, then?” Murdon pushed the phone towards Daniel with a scaled finger and he picked it up. “You are aware that a non-intrinsic Focus is something distinguishable from ordinary objects?”
“No,” Daniel answered honestly.
The Commander had been leading Daniel into a trap, only for him to jump off a cliff first. “You don’t? Regardless, we can tell this necklace is a Focus and it is bound to you. You have multiclassed, yet by all appearances you are level one. Explain this.”
“I can’t. I-” A strong breeze was blowing on Daniel as he navigated the conversation, threatening to tip him over. He took a calming breath but it didn’t help steady his voice. “Look there’s something you need to know.”
“We know you’re a Spiritualist,” Murdon said, guessing incorrectly. “It’s not a crime so long as you don’t do anything. It’s just strange.”
“What?” Daniel remembered the word but not where he’d heard it. “No, I’m not. Well, actually-” Is that what they call people from other worlds? It doesn’t make sense, but did they already figure it out? “What does that mean?”
There was a snarl from the draconoid. It could have been aggravation or just a sigh, but Daniel couldn’t tell. “Your peculiar attitude towards monsters?”
Now he was really confused. “Is this all about Ringcat? Did he do something?”
“We’re not here to debate theology Murdon,” Lograve headed off the tangent. “Do you remember what you were speaking of back in the tent?”
“Please don’t interrupt,” Murdon growled. “But now that we are here, you claimed you were in Eido during the Upswell. What do you remember?” Daniel clutched his phone under the desk. He didn’t need to read the notification that popped up to know what it said. He couldn’t answer, his mind was preoccupied with the various ways these people probably tortured aliens. Murdon sighed again, the deep raspy noise not doing much to settle Daniel’s nerves. “If you were truly there then we need to know what you saw. Nothing like this has happened before in the history of the Octyrrum.”
“Octyrrum?” Daniel was falling again, this time in his mind. He could have gotten that from context but he’d blurted out the question before taking a second to think. He had time now as the silence stretched and both stared at him. Daniel panicked in place for a few moments until suddenly, he wasn’t afraid anymore. It was like after the first few moments of flying with the lightning wings. This conversation was going somewhere fast, and now he just had to guide himself as best he could and make it to the ground intact. “Is that what the world’s called?”
“Yes,” both exasperated men said at nearly the same time.
Well, I’m screwed, he thought. Might as well lean into it. Is it too late to say ‘take me to your leader’? Probably. “That’s cool. Mine’s just called Earth.”
Lograve cut in again, and Murdon didn't stop him this time. “Are you from a distant region? Or, perhaps, did you grow up in one of Aughal’s villages? Your view of cosmology is rather uninformed.”
Daniel wasn’t listening, he was on his phone. “Here.” He handed it to Murdon. The Encyclopedia page for the world was open. It was titled ‘The Octyrrum’ now, and there was a little more on it, but Daniel didn’t bother reading. That was Murdon’s job.
“What language is this?” the draconoid asked, after glancing over the text.
“You can’t read it?”
“No.”
Daniel rubbed his face. “It wouldn’t be that easy would it.” Both men were looking at him with concern now. Do they think I’m crazy? Is that better than being an alien? Then he remembered the current crisis and what would likely happen to him if they thought him unhinged. “I can’t explain it, but three, no four, damn it, some number of days ago I just woke up on a floating island. My world doesn’t have those so I’m pretty sure this isn’t it. Has this kind of thing happened before?”
There was a grating sound as Lograve pulled a chair close to the table, sat backwards in it, and started closely inspecting Daniel. “I don’t see any curses or aberrant mana, though I wouldn’t detect any effect stronger than my level,” he commented. “Nor can I see his mana flow if that’s the issue.”
“I’m not cursed or crazy,” Daniel said flatly. “I take it this doesn’t happen?”
“No!” Murdon said in a half-roar. “There is only the Octyrrum and the darkness beyond it.”
“As much as he’s been wrong recently, Murdon’s right.” Lograve spoke with a calming tone, keeping any sense of mirth out. “Look, if you’re trying to avoid talking about what happened-”
“You want to know what happened?”
“You wouldn’t be here if we didn’t.” Now Daniel could tell the difference between Murdon’s exasperated and angry snarls. Since he’d asked for it, and Murdon looked like he’d eat him if Daniel didn’t comply, he got on with it and prayed for a soft landing.
The story started with Earth. Daniel knew enough to cover the beginning of the universe while only going slightly awry from humanity’s collective understanding, but in this conversation, he was still falling. He had to get to the point before the metaphorical ground got to him. Several questions were thrown at him at the start. They were mostly manifestations of incredulity and after a few minutes, they just let him talk. His knowledge of Eido gave him time, but if he started there they’d be back to thinking he was crazy without the motivation to keep listening.
So, he talked about his home in the mountains. The country hospital his mother worked in. The necklace, where it had come from, and what had happened to who’d given it to him. Dropping out of college after growing distant from his family and falling into a tailspin, growing isolated from most of society while he worked a dead-end job. The absolute lack of magic, floating islands, or giant sabretooth cats. He then meekly added that last one had existed but was now extinct.
Finally, he reached the point of waking up on the island and the strange corruption of his memories. That was something that drew fresh questions and his repeated assertions that he wasn’t cursed, at least as far as he knew. The sparkbats and lightning wings ground the retelling to a halt as he had to keep explaining what he’d discovered.
“It must have been a power from the Artificer class,” Lograve eventually concluded. “I don’t think anyone normal would have had the idea to strap monster bits on themselves before jumping off a cliff. Well, they might try, but I doubt they would succeed. Even for those with enchanting powers outside the class, the process requires magically receptive material.”
Daniel pointed to the spines. "These wouldn't count?"
Lograve picked one up and held it to the light, frowning. "Not likely. It is faintly magical, but I am speaking more of rare metals, wood, and so on. I believe Artificers have a way around this, though I wouldn't call what you described actual enchanting. You took a risk trusting that shoddy construction."
“It’s not like I had much of a choice. I looked up flying powers on my phone but I didn’t have anything. It was the next best option.”
Murdon was sitting back in his chair now. He’d gone through a journey of emotions that had been nearly indiscernible to Daniel, unfamiliar with how giant lizards expressed them. He guessed the draconoid had arrived at tired and pensive. “What happened after that?”
“Well-” Daniel was going to go back to his long form explanation but Murdon clearly wanted a summary. “I almost died from falling, found Ringcat, and came here. Oh, I did run into Heldren, Quala, and William on the way. There was a gestalt with them but I never got their name. That’s it.” He glanced out the window and saw the night sky again. It’d been that way for about an hour now.
A scaled hand rubbed Murdon’s temple as his eyes closed. “You’re either one demented storyteller or you’re telling the truth. At the very least nothing you said contradicts what has happened.”
“Can I ask another question?”
“Yes.” That was a tired sigh, Daniel thought. The trick to decoding Murdon’s vocal expressions was ignoring the snarl entirely.
“What language are we speaking? I don’t think it’s English. You couldn’t read my phone, and I saw a sign that I could read that’s a different language I’ve never seen before.”
“How are you understanding a language you don’t even know the name of?” Lograve asked, and Daniel gave him a weary smile.
“That was my next question.”
“It’s Greater Forlothan. Most of this Realm speaks it, though it’s not a universal tongue.”
Murdon cut over the side conversation. “I’m sorry but I have no more time for this. Mr. Brant, if what you are saying is true then I suppose one impossibility befits another. I do not think you are a threat and I don’t have time to get to the bottom of this. If you're not lying, well, you’ve come to this world at a perilous time and place. The divine construct that kept the darkness of the Crest at bay in the region vanished shortly after you arrived, along with our strongest hunters. Without it this region will become more and more unstable. In all honesty, nothing like this has happened in the history of our world. I cannot guarantee your safety, but I can make an exception to your status. I am not of the mind to believe you constructed a tale this insane to avoid responsibility.”
“I don’t feel like I know enough to decide that. What’s going to happen here? Is help coming or is this a full evacuation?” It was the thought of just waiting out everything in the town that turned him away from agreeing immediately. Being a bystander in the bottom holds of the ship while a storm raged outside didn’t sound appetizing to Daniel, even if the alternative was fighting more flying lightning piranhas. He needed to know how bad it was on the top deck. “Sorry, I should keep myself to one at a time, but what could I do to help?”
Lograve answered him, showing the weight of his past teamwork with his friend by taking the heat off of him. “To your first two questions, we can’t tell you. Fear has a way of twisting information and we,” he looked at Murdon to make it clear who had really made the decision, “decided it was best to only inform the public that there is a plan. On that last note?” He paused in thought. “I may have an idea. Murdon would need to agree, among others. You can stay at my home tonight and I can give you some reading to answer the more basic questions. Could Ashier bring him to the foyer while we discuss?”
“Ashier!” Murdon called out. Not in a demanding tone, but the volume might have woken people across the street. The cloud entered the room by way of the door gap. “Guest, downstairs, wait.” there was a series of motions accompanying the words, ending with a nod at Lograve.
“Absolutely.” Ashier gestured with a limb for Daniel to follow. He left, and the postures of the two remaining relaxed as they gave each other a complicated look. Lograve knew that trying to make sense of what they just heard would take even more time and they both needed rest.
“I’m always amazed by how well you two communicate,” Lograve remarked, introducing some small talk to forestall the deeper conversation. “I’ve tried that before but it only leads to more confusion. Don’t even get me started on Telepathy.”
“You have to understand how they see the world, and that it’s different from how we do,” Murdon explained. “Frustratingly it’s also different for each one. It’s almost like learning a cipher for each individual gestalt. You can talk to them without it but both sides have to be constantly decoding what the other’s saying. Ashier’s been my assistant for so long it just works. I may even call us friends, though I don't have a bond with Ashier like I do with you.” He shook his head and got back to the matter at hand. “What do you want to do with him?”
“We’re still planning on a group of ten for Roost’s Peak?” Murdon nodded. “I want him in on it. Assuming he agrees.”
“Then it’s done, assuming he agrees,” Murdon echoed the words.
Lograve froze. “Just like that? You’re not going to ask me why I want to take a young man either fresh out of his world or completely insane, or both, monster hunting? No arguing about how he could still be a level nine secretly plotting to read our diaries?”
“What? No, no,” Murdon chuckled. “I went off the deep end of paranoia and ignored you trying to pull me back to shore. It’s the least I can do. He has the spot, no questions asked.” Murdon frowned, then added, “Well, one question. He is an Artificer.”
”We don’t have the ability to make use of him that way,” Lograve sighed, seeing Murdon’s point without him having to specify. “For one thing, I’m fairly certain there’s no cross-pollination between Arcanist and Artificer formulae. As we’ve never had an Artificer in the region before, we’ve also never had a reason to stock the recorded versions of those pesky things. I use we as a general term by the way, even if we did have something like that-“
”Eido.” Murdon nodded. “But he can create formulae, at least he claims to be able to.”
”I’m not sure they are proper formulae, at least as he describes,” Lograve replied carefully, making it clear he wasn’t confident in his answer. “They almost sound half-baked. I know Artificers have methods for developing new formulae, but I wouldn’t trust anything he makes not to explode until we get a better measure of his craft. As well as the man himself.” Murdon thought Lograve would leave it there, but the Arcanist added, “There’s also material concerns. Proper Artificer formulae requires magically charged material. Sticks and reeds won’t cut it, which gives me another reason to think his formulae aren’t all there yet. But Roost’s Peak-“
”I see. You think any is there?”
”If not, we’ll hope to trip on something. There’s also the point to consider that what he makes is capped to his level. If we can get him to at least 2 through some quick training, all the better.” Lograve spread his arms. “Now that you’ve approved this ‘no questions asked’, mind if I take a nap?”
”Go, go,” Murdon said good naturedly. “I am expecting something good if this plan of yours works.”
“I’m going to leave then, and you’re going to get some rest before you accuse the next mail courier that makes it here of being a seventh Realm spy.”
“Tomorrow,” Murdon waved him off. “The revisions will be finished and the Roster will be done. Tonight I have to double check their assignments, both for personnel and target zones.” He opened the chest and brought out a heavily marked map of the region. “Roost’s Peak.” Murdon tapped the map, to indicate the mountainous fort as Lograve walked over. “The other team assigned that area will be the last to come back, but they were on escort duty. You’ll be there for at least a month to clear monsters from the area. We need to hold the fort for as long as we can.”
“We can only do these controlled burns for so long. Without the Spoke we’ll start seeing higher and higher level enemies out there, and closer to populated areas.”
Murdon looked to the distant pass nestled in the mountains to the west. He couldn’t see it through the wall, but he could feel the coming trial like it was the red glow of a distant fire. “Then we’ll just have to level faster and hope it’s enough when the time comes.”