I don’t know if I was expecting crashes of thunder or lightning to accompany the momentous act, but at the very least I thought that he might start to recover even the slightest bit. Instantly leaping to his feet and galloping around the camp might have been a little unrealistic in my expectations, but I had hoped he could show off some of his new vitality and let me know I could sleep easy tonight, that he would be there to keep watch while I tried to gain my own magic powers.
Either way, I felt gypped as he instead rolled back to his side, and closing his eyes went to sleep.
Looking down at the stone in my own hands, I thought about putting it into my mouth. Shuddering, I gagged a little as I raised my hand, after a couple of seconds of holding it in front of my mouth I had to drop my hand and instead tried to work on my meditation some more to see if I could absorb the core that way. If it was just the ick factor of trying to eat something that came out of a goblin’s body, I could probably eventually force myself to do it. But this thing was almost as big as the palm of my hand, I had no idea how I was supposed to choke the thing down.
After about half an hour of trying and not making any progress, I sighed. I put the rock back in my pocket and decided to work on building a fire. For multiple reasons like to clear out my tent for my own slumbers, so that I could make some tea to help clear my mind, and to put myself in a more introspective mood. Not wanting to clear out the trench of all the wet ash, I simply kicked a little bit of dirt down the length to give the wood a bed to separate the two. I knew the proper camp procedure would be to shovel it out and save the ash for leaching lye or using it as a deodorizer over one’s waste, but with my being determined to leave in the morning, I just didn’t have it in me to go the extra mile. My leg was still continuing to pulse in pain, which had me picturing the infection getting worse by the second.
Pulling all of the wood out of my tent, I just put a small pile in the trench and took my knife out to quickly strip a branch down for another fire starter. Pulling out the covered pot, I dug my long tongs out of my pocket to shift through the dirt for the still warm coal. Adding it to the waiting fuel, I bent down to add the third leg of the formula to my waiting setup. After a couple of minutes of blowing, the fire eventually started to blaze up. Giving it a moment before I put some more branches on, I went to the tent to pull out the kettle that came with my mess kit. Returning the pan I had wiped clean, I pulled out the kettle and added enough water to fill it from my water bladder. Setting it down on the fire I let it heat up while I pulled a couple of tea bags and the two collapsible cups that came with the kit.
Despite not having anyone to share it with I decided on making both now so I wouldn’t be stuck trying to remake the second after it grew darker. With my setup ready I pulled the flowers I had gathered from the goblins I had captured. Looking at them, they didn’t look like much. They didn’t have any inner glow like the cores did and I wondered why they might be gathering them. Sure I know poppies make opium and saffron comes from the stamen of a flower. But in all of those cases, it takes an insane amount of flowers to produce any workable amount of product, and it just didn’t make sense that the little savages could be operating on that kind of scale. Sniffing one of the smaller yellow ones, it had a fewer number of petals than a dandelion but otherwise looked fairly similar. Not getting much of the oder I, I moved on to the pink one that looked very much like a tulip. This one definitely had a perfume to it that smell felt relaxing and seemed to help ease my mind the slightest bit.
Hearing my kettle whistle I held off my examination of the last three and poured the water over my tea. Holding one cup in my hand, I let the liquid warm them while slowly inhaling the steam as I searched for the traces of perfume that continued to grow stronger as the tea continued brewing. Eventually, it got to a point where I was satisfied it was strong enough and I pulled the bags from both cups and set them on top of the plate I had grabbed with the kettle to save for a second run. Leaving the liquid to cool, I got back to my flora examination.
Picking up the flower that had alternating blue and purple leaves, I brought it up to my face to smell, and as I gave it a big whiff I started to grow dizzy and dropped it to the ground next to me. Feeling my body grow limp in my chair, a part of my mind knew I should be concerned, but I couldn’t bring the rest of me to care. The next thing I knew, I was having an out of body experience, watching over my body as it leaned even farther back into the camp stool. I saw more than felt myself collapse over the back of it and then a blackness came up over me and there was nothing.
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Waking with a start I felt a rough tongue dragging itself over my bandaged ankle. Staring up at the bright sky I fought to clear the fog from my thoughts. As I felt another lick on my leg, my mind cleared instantly, and jumped to my feet. Okay, that’s a lie, I rolled over and pushed my overweight body up. Looking around I saw the bear standing in front of me, giving me a concerned look.
Grateful that it was him licking me awake and not a goblin, giving me a speculative taste so it could decide on the best way to season me. I gave the bear a small wave of apology, too embarrassed at the stupid mistake that had put me out. Lucky to be alive, I looked over at the bear, noticing that he wasn’t breathing hard anymore and that he seemed to be doing a lot better in general. As I took a step over to him I noticed my ankle wasn’t hurting anymore either, taking a knee to undo the bandage when I looked under it I was shocked.
All of the angry red lines that had been coming off of the suture strips had disappeared and it had closed most of the way up, looking more like it had happened weeks ago instead of last night. I looked at the bite wound in amazement. Moving my gaze to focus on my arm, I hoped the flower had done something similar. But after I unwrapped my arm I saw that wound was still looking the same. Leaving my arm unwrapped for the moment, I started taking the suture bandages off my leg as it was closed up enough that I didn’t think they were needed anymore. When I was done, I rewrapped both of the injuries, deciding I wanted some protection as they weren’t completely healed all of the way. Looking over to the bear who seemed to be giving off a proud aura, I asked the question. “Did you do this?” I pointed to indicate the leg.
At his nod of affirmation, the little kid in me grew giddy at how he seemed to be growing in intelligence. I didn’t have any doubts that he was able to understand me. While the older cynical part of my mind thought that might be hope instead of logic, the rest of me told him to stuff it. I could only guess that the flower had knocked me out and in my sleep, Gaian had managed to gain some control over the core that he had absorbed. Upon waking and healing himself he must have seen the state I was in and decided to help my leg out. Wondering how much he understood, I decided to start playing twenty questions with him. Reaching over for one of my cups of tea, I forgo trying to get a fire started for now and instead just went with drinking it cold.
“Okay, for now, let’s go with a right paw for yes,” I pointed to the paw to get rid of any confusion as to whether I meant my right or his. “And left paw for no. Do you understand?” I said pointing to the opposite limb.
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As he lifted his right paw, I smiled broadly. Seeing how he had figured out some of the magic already I was happy to have someone who I could run the thousands of questions that were spinning out of my head.
Sipping on my tea, I asked the obvious one first. “Do you feel like you remember any of your time in the ball that brought us here?” When the bear raised his left paw, I tried again with my next query. “How about our planet that we were born on, do you remember any of that life, or do your memories start here?”
When he raised up both of his paws, I took it as a maybe or that he was unsure. Moving on to questions about magic, I asked. “Is your healing weaker than the troll’s was or are you consciously saving your energy for an emergency?”
This time Gaian raised up his right paw to my first while following it up with a second right and then both which I took to mean yes it was weaker and that yes he was saving energy but I was on the wrong track as to how it worked. Realizing that with only being able to get yes-no answers I was going to have to make a lot of guesses and end up with some bad assumptions, I went ahead and asked the question I probably should have started out with. “Do you have any way to talk to me?”
As he raised his left paw, my heart fell just a little bit, I didn’t realize until now just how much I missed having someone to talk to. Yes, this one sided conversation was an improvement, and yes I had always prided myself on my ability to get by on my own. One of the reasons I loved going on camping trips was to get away from everything. But at this moment, all of the subjective lifetimes I had spent trying to figure out the Order and Chaos that had been holding me hostage really started hitting me hard. Bending my head down to sip at my cold tea, I did my best to compose myself so that the bear wouldn’t think I was disappointed in him. Breathing slowly to keep the tears from coming, I tried to find that amazement I had been feeling before that I had a talking bear for a companion.
Taking another long drink, I finished off the small cup and reached for the second one I had made. Realizing I was being rude, I spoke up quickly. “Do you need anything? Food, more water? The last of the beer is gone, but if you want I can try and get the fire going to make some more tea if you need some flavor to your water.”
With two left paws being raised in succession I took them to mean, that he was fine for now. Deciding to ask the bigger questions first before moving on to juicier magic ones, I asked them nervously. “Do you want to continue on with me, or do you plan on going your own way?” When he raised up his right followed by a quick left, I felt a smile growing on my face. As he came forward and licked my cheeks, I didn’t even feel the need to flinch away from his breath!
Following up, I clarified the pecking order, as he had the weight and magic now, it was going to be his decision and I would just have to be good with it if I didn’t want to lose my tank, and apparently now healer. “Do you want to be in charge?” When I got a left paw, I asked again just to clarify. “So you are okay with me being in charge and making the decisions?” When he raised his right paw, I decided to take the win and just go with it for now. I wouldn’t say I am a natural leader, I make a better NCO than a General. I am happiest when I have someone else setting the ending point and I can be left to my own devices and deal with all of the logistics of making someone else’s orders happen. But if he was happy with taking orders, I guess I was going to just work on solving the puzzles for now.
Moving on I decided to interrogate him on what he had figured out about magic. “Are you doing the healing, or is it mostly the core you swallowed?” I started off for my first query on how the magic of this world worked. He raised his left, followed by a quick right. I was somewhat disappointed at the response as it meant that he was much less likely to be able to help me figure things out if he was letting the core do all of the work. Trying something else other than a yes-no, I went on to try another tack.
“Can you feel the energy build up when the goblins die? Do you feel the emotions of anger and hate invading you feeling like they are trying to take you over?” As the bear again raised his left paw, set it down, and again raised it up, I felt a little more frustration growing inside of me. Taking a larger breath I focused on not letting it take hold, calming myself down I took another couple of slow breaths. “It’s not his fault he doesn’t have answers, he can only tell you what he knows. If he lied or made up his responses you wouldn’t be in a better position. Obviously, your time in the ball affected you in different ways. Take a beat and accept that, be grateful he is going to continue on this journey with you and is willing to be your meat shield. Stop getting frustrated he doesn’t have any good answers for you… you also don’t have anything you can tell him. He is not responsible for calming the rabid hamster in your head. Only you can deal with that monster. Be grateful he helped heal your leg.”
Finishing up my lecture to the part of me that relentlessly wanted to find more answers, I forced myself to calm down. Trying another tack, I asked the bear a more straightforward line of questions. “Do you think you could regrow your head or limbs like the troll managed to?” When he raised his left paw again, I continued on trying to get a reason.
“Did you see the yellow energy in the core?” This time I finally got a right paw from him. Continuing on the line I asked, “Do you think that was what was responsible for the troll’s greater regeneration or do you think it was because the troll was the original owner of the core and had better insights into how to work it?”
This time he was much less sure of his answers, raising both paws, but keeping his right higher than the left. Taking it to mean he was hesitantly giving me a yes, but didn’t want to commit to it. I followed it up by asking, “Do you think you will continue to improve and eventually be able to get better, or is it a static ability and what you have is what you got?” This time he seemed more confident as he started off with a right and then returned to his left.
Continuing on I asked, “Are you limited in how much healing you can do?” When I got a right paw in response, I followed up with. “Does it recharge slowly or do you have to empty it out and wait for it to refill completely?” When I got a right paw for the first part, followed by a left with the second. I was happy that this world went with more of a gaming mana system rather than following the major dice adventure games system of long and short rests.
Moving on to another thought I queried the bear again, “If I feed you more cores, do you think you will continue to gain more powers?” When I got a left paw in response, I followed up with some clarifying questions.
“Does that mean you can only have the one core?” This got a hesitant right paw in response. Taking that to mean he thought so but wasn’t sure, I moved on. “Do you only have a healing power?” As I got a right paw from him, I went to more of a rapid fire, as the questions just started spilling out of my mouth.
“Do you have only one?” Left paw.
“Two?” Right paw.
“Is one the regen for you while the second is what you used on me?” Again another right paw.
“Do you think these will continue to improve as you use them or will you need more cores in the future.” This question had him raising both paws, I guess he didn’t have as many answers as I had hoped.
Trying again I asked, “Do you think you will get any other abilities or is it just healing?” This one got more of a shrug, sensing I was running up against the depths of his knowledge on the subject, I started finishing off my tea, while I continued to think if there were any other questions I wanted to ask. Picking up the core I had been thinking about trying to ingest before the purple flower knocked me out, I held off on consuming it for now. If we were limited to only one power then while doubling up on healing might make me feel better in general, I might need to go for a combat power and just trust in my partner to have my back. If all we were able to do was keep ourselves healed we would no doubt end up like the troll when we ran up against something we weren’t able to take out.
Leaving the decision for now, I felt my stomach starting to rumble, either from how long I had been unconscious or because the healing the bear had bestowed upon me had used up a bunch of calories and my stomach wanted a refill. Putting the core into the pocket that held the other two the trolls secondary energy had started improving, I pulled a basket of dried fish out of my tent. Putting a piece into my mouth I offered some to the bear, sure that he needed to recharge as well.