The next morning was a decidedly awkward and stiff affair. We folded the tents, packed the bed rolls, put out the fire, and head out. All of my attempts at conversation, even a ‘Good Morning’, were met with silence. Not even stony or hostile silence, Cana was on complete autopilot.
The tediousness of the day’s walk was made even worse by the fact that it was a tense tediousness. Or it was for me anyway, I kept worrying about what the hell had gotten Cana so worked up and how I could try and fix it. It occurred to me that blowing up was on her and this situation was at least partially her fault but blaming your problems on others and expecting them to solve them never helped anyone.
Well, those worries, or the more practical issue of how I was going to heal the hole in my chest. It wouldn’t heal by itself while it was water, and turning it back was a swift path to bleeding out.
The weather helped not at all. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and wind was about as lively as the banter between Cana and I. The sparsely forested plains continued, providing plenty of visibility and time to react in case any monsters showed up (except the goddamn invisible ones), but also distinctly lacking in any sort of shade.
Though the hood of my robe and my skill with creating a cooling mist kept the worst of the sun’s heat off of me, the air was still scorching, and the mist required constant focus to keep at the correct temperature – too warm and it did nothing, too cold and it was unpleasant from the opposite direction. On top of that, I had to keep a constant flow of magic from my second lattice to all the enchanted equipment I was wearing.
Given the morass of worries, confusion, and multitasking my thoughts were swimming through, it was a small wonder that I noticed Cana calling me at all.
“Yeah?” I stopped and looked at her.
She fidgeted – took a deep breath, “I’m sorry.”
Huh. Well, that should make things easier.
What followed was a long, awkward, and heartfelt conversion wherein we established that I was an absolute moron for forgetting that there were two of the monsters, Cana – experienced as she is and S Class candidate – should never have been ambushed, and that getting emotional over the whole issue was a mistake.
Cana, after much prodding, also admitted that she was used to adventuring solo, and the sight of me almost dying had really scared her and she was blaming herself for the whole thing and she didn’t want to lose the first person she enjoyed adventuring with and…something that she very abruptly cut herself off on when she looked at me. I was curious but now wasn’t the time to pry. It was a whole rant once Cana really started going.
I in turn admitted that I really wasn’t used to dealing with this sort of life and death thing. My old life was after all very calm, and monsters were little more than idle fantasy. Honestly, adventuring wasn’t something discussed outside of DnD (which I’ll never play with my friends again and – nope, not going there. I’m not repressing, and no one can tell me otherwise) after I reached a certain age.
I’d told her about my old life – quite a lot actually, people tended to be interested in universes where their life stories were fiction – but it wasn’t until now that either of us really understood how different my life was before transmigrating.
Neither of us are particularly comfortable with that sort of conversation though, so we moved on to figuring out how to keep this sort of ambush from happening again as soon as we could. I didn’t want any more holes in me (my reincarnation already gave me an extra, and this new one really ruined one of the benefits), and Cana – despite being far tougher than me – was still left with a mean bruise where the first llysanwe had hit her.
On Cana’s end, I got her to actually give me an in-depth explanation of her magic so that we could begin planning combos and actual countermeasures. Something we should have done before we even left, but I was too busy worrying about packing properly and Cana…was distracted by something else that she categorically refused to tell me about. She did assure me it had no bearing on the planning, so I reluctantly let it go.
Card Magic is one of a loosely defined group of Holder-type magics that revolved around storing things within the mage’s Relic (the technical name for the item a Holder-mage uses), referred to as Sealing magics (not to be confused with Sealing Magic, a Caster-type magic that accomplished similar things, but differently). Other magics in the group included Bag Magic, Phylacteries, and some variants of Gem, Staff, and Wand Magic.
Card Magic in particular excels at both versatility and precision as a Card is far easier to create than a Wand or Phylactery, not to mention the ability to create phantasmal duplicates of the Card that contain a portion of whatever is stored in the card allowed for far easier use in combat. It does, however, suffer from being considerably less powerful than the other types. The lack of power is a major problem for most mages, making Card Magic almost unheard of among adventuring mages. Notice the ‘almost’ as the lack of power isn’t an issue when your dad’s name is Gildarts and you’ve inherited at least part of his absurd magical capacity. Cana couldn’t exactly flare her power to give me an exact idea at the moment – the act being the equivalent of screaming ‘Free Food Here!’ – but her assurances and efficacy with her magic convinced me that she had a power to spare.
The really cool thing about Sealing magics (again, not to be confused with Sealing Magic) though, is that the things you can store aren’t just limited to physical objects and energies, it could get conceptual.
“So why the hell haven’t you made a Time or Health card yet?” I asked as soon as that little bit of knowledge was revealed to me.
Cana glared at me for the interruption, “If you’d let me finish, I was just about to tell you that creating concept cards is really really hard. And I already have a Health card, how do you think I got myself standing after the llysanwe hit me?”
I did a double take at that’ “You have actual Healing Magic? And you didn’t tell me? Or anyone?” I was under the impression that Healing magic didn’t exist unless you had been raised by a Sky Dragon.
She grimaced, “First of all, I didn’t tell anyone specifically to avoid that kind of reaction. Second of all, it isn’t actual Healing magic, it’s just a cool work around” she preened for a second, “a very cool work around”.
I ignored the implied reprimand, magic is more important, and prodded her to elaborate.
“I can’t make an actual Healing card, but what I can do is put my own health into a card and then take it out later. I can’t grow anything back, but I can heal most cuts, bruises, and infections and stuff.” she explained.
I thought about that for a moment.
“So you’re making yourself less ‘healthy’ in the moment so you can be more ‘healthy’ later?”
Cana nodded.
On one hand, I can’t confirm that making yourself less ‘healthy’ weakens your bodily systems significantly, especially the immune system. On the other, I can’t confirm that it doesn’t either.
Case in point, I cuffed Cana around the head without warning and, ignoring her startled look, proceeded to do my best to explain things like germ theory, AIDS, and how monumentally stupid it is to mess around with your own body’s integrity using unknown methods without a doctor around and in an uncontrolled environment.
By the time I’d gotten through all of her ‘but I’m ok so it can’t be that bad’, questions, and my own ‘I don’t have microscope right now so just trust me’ it was nearing evening and it was time to set up camp again.
We never actually managed to get around to planning a method of actually securing our campsite, so for tonight, we improvised. Violently.
We couldn’t use any large spells or effects so as not to attract anything, but that didn’t keep us from slowly and methodically turning out campsite into a barren crater. It wouldn’t prevent anything from coming in later, but for now we could be assured that there was nothing coming for us while we were setting up the tents.
Over dinner we discussed a few future possible Cards – mostly other ‘attribute’ cards like strength, intelligence, dexterity and the like. Cana also gave me a proper list of all the cards she had – a bunch for specific item storage, fire, force, water, lightning, sleep gas, and health.
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We did a final check around the campsite, before Cana went to bed and I started my half of the watch.
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My watch ended up being completely calm, though I stressed about it anyway. Keeping a couple rings of water floating around our campsite took only a miniscule amount of magic and proved to be an excellent method of alerting me if something was coming. A little too good actually, as I kept startling at even the slightest disturbance to them (Swift Swallows mostly – harmless little birds that survive by being fast).
Cana’s was similarly calm, though she avoided magic entirely and kept watch using just her own physical senses. Like a maniac.
Come morning, we had breakfast and packed the camp in sleepy silence before heading out once more.
The weather was slightly more cooperative today (including a brisk wind!), helping us wake up and we were soon back to discussing the possibilities of our magics and how to keep ourselves from dying. This was of course interspersed with various stretches of drawing penises in the most creative ways we could think of (and other similarly immature humor), but we were the only two people for literally miles and it was lifting the mood.
The more productive aspects of our discussions did lead to some new tricks being prototyped. Cana started working on a wind card to create an actual sensing method for herself. In order for the wind card to absorb wind, Cana would either have to channel magic into it, or there would have to be actual wind around to be stored in the card. In theory, this principle could be used to keep air within a certain radius completely still and any sort of movement in the area would generate wind which would in turn increase the amount of wind the card absorbs, and this increase could be detected. In theory being the key word here, as Cana hadn’t made the card yet and we weren’t sure if the card even could get that sensitive.
I, on the other hand, did not come up with anything nearly so clever for my own situational awareness. Instead, I just expanded on the concept I used to keep watch at night into something I should have thought of within ten minutes of hearing ‘you’re going on an adventure!’.
I just thought of covering an area in mist. It takes minimal magic power and sensing where something is within the mist is simple as wherever the thing is, the mist isn’t.
Cana didn’t quite understand why I was angry with myself about it but coming up with the idea this late is some real amateur hour stuff. I pride myself on being a fantasy nerd after all!
Once I’d come up with and tested the trick though, I spent the rest of the day helping Cana design her new card. I was no expert, or even novice really, with Card Magic, but most of my reading at the guild had revolved around magical theory so I could at least help by doing some advanced rubber ducking.
We couldn’t quite start making the card yet since Cana couldn’t walk and craft at the same time, though more importantly, she didn’t have the tools and materials hand.
That was a minor issue however, as one of the great advantages of Card Magic is that the tools and materials needed are both relatively cheap and common. Common enough that we should be able to get everything at Ghareon.
Speaking of which, the tips of the mountain range in which Ghareon made its home had just become visible an hour or so before we stopped for the night.
Assuming no more surprises, we’d get there in about 2 days.
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Ghareon had one of Fiore’s more noteworthy designs, having sprung up as a direct consequence of Gildarts’ road work.
When Gildart’s came to Ghareon Peak (creative naming I know) he, like usual, went through instead of around. The difference in this case though, was that he blasted a far wider and taller tunnel. During the excavation process, Gildarts also discovered a large tunnel connecting to the Catacombs.
The Catacombs of course being a massive web of tunnels and caverns that ran underneath the continent and were home to countless monstrosities and probably eldritch horrors – it is apparently quite difficult to tell the difference between the two considering how alien the biology of Catacomb residents is. Contrary to my trope sense however, passages from the Catacombs to the surface – or even mines – are fairly rare, and there aren’t any sentient evil races down there that anyone knows about (the only other sentients on the continent were the Giants up in Holod).
Despite the lack of organized hostility from the Catacombs, the native monstrosities more than made up for it in numbers and ferocity. Surface monsters were much like animals with magical enhancement, hunting only to feed and staying out of everyone’s way otherwise. Catacomb monsters, on the other hand, could and did hunt for sport (how there’s anything left alive down there considering that kind of behavior is a mystery to even the greatest scholars).
The element that motivated the building of Ghareon though, was the fact that the lattices containing the magic of Catacomb monsters crystallized upon the monster’s death. Into Lacrima crystals to be precise. The Lacrima harvested from the Catacomb monsters made up the majority of Ghareon’s exports (not to mention fueled the enchantments keeping the tunnel from caving in) and turned the place into a monster hunter’s paradise.
Ghareon Pass (which went under Ghareon Peak and housed Ghareon City. The place was built on a whim, and it shows in the naming) is a beautiful place to walk through. The air in the pass was completely still and quiet. I could hear each of our footsteps echo slightly. Slowly, as the entrance retreated behind us, the tunnel dimmed, then brightened again as our eyes adjusted to the multihued glow of the Lacrima crystals embedded in the walls of the tunnel. We walked silently, appreciating the beauty. If you looked closely, you could faintly see the flowing, multihued rune work connecting each of the crystals to each other. You could almost believe you were under the night sky if you let your vision blur slightly.
The atmosphere was eventually broken as we began to hear the sounds of life coming from the city. The volume was deceptive though, as the tunnel caused the sound to carry and echo far further than it would outside.
The city, in its own way, was just as awe inspiring as the tunnel. The pass emerged about halfway up the massive cavern that contained the city. From where we stood, we could see the city descend towards the pit in the center of the bowl and crawl up the cavern walls. The stabilizing Lacrima were in even greater display here than in the Pass, covering the walls and embedded in ledges extruded from the cavern walls, casting the cavern into a bright twilight.
Greater and more impressive than all of that though, was the stalactite guild hall of the Southern Wolves Guild. A great mass of stalactites hung above the pit in the center, each hollowed out and covered in windows and Lacrima crystals, giving the impression of an inverted castle.
While I was busy goggling at the city like an archetypical country bumpkin, Cana had led us to the city gates. Well, ‘gate’ was a misleading term as they implied there was some kind of wall. Instead, there was a free-floating walkway leading to a set of stairs descending into the city proper.
“Ahem” A rough looking guard clearing his throat finally tore my attention away from the city. He and his partner flanked the stairs, both dressed in matching glowing scale armor. I forcibly suppressed any indication of my disdain. That kind of glow was an indicator of extraordinarily inefficient magical channeling, so inefficient I had to deliberately force it when I was posing with my new equipment.
‘Let it go’ I told myself, ‘Not everyone is a Fairy Tail mage. My standards are just skewed’.
Still, it was a little annoying to look at, like a modern artist who threw paint at a canvas and was absolutely convinced that they were the next da Vinci. They even seemed arrogant about it… wait no.
I blinked. The guards were definitely not arrogant or condescending, I was just distracted by the glowing armor. If anything, the guards looked exhausted. And expectant.
I blinked again. Right, they wanted something.
“Sorry, I missed that. What did you ask?”
The guard sighed, “Why’re you coming through Ghareon?”
“Oh, uh, we’re just passing through on our way to the Sabretooth Mountains.”
The second guard grunted something along the lines of ‘Smart’. The first guard shot him a look then nodded tiredly and waved us through.
I turned to Cana as soon as we passed out of earshot, “Was that normal?”
She frowned, “No. Something happened since last time I was here.” She waved her hand at the city as a whole.
I took a closer look at the city. Before we left Magnolia, I had been under the impression the Ghareon was a small monster hunter’s outpost but seeing the cavern and the city had just about made me seriously question whoever gave it that label.
However, now that I was inside the city, I could see how the description was accurate. For all that Ghareon was located in a massive cavern, it was still a cavern, and therefore wasn’t very big by city standards. The fantastical locale and dim lightning had also masked the dismal architecture present everywhere except the Southern Wolves’ guild hall. Each house was clearly raised with quick and dirty applications of Earth Magic, so little attention paid to aesthetics that many of the buildings could even make Soviet architecture look cheerful in comparison.
Though even past all of that it was disturbingly obvious that there was something wrong. The streets were almost completely empty and many of the buildings were crumbling. This wouldn’t have meant much to me when I first arrived, but since then I had learned that even the meanest of Earth Magic cantrips could mend this sort of minor wear and tear. The fact that the buildings weren’t being repaired suggested rapid depopulation, economic crisis, town wide low morale, or even all three.
Cana and I spent the rest of our walk to the local inn in silence, looking around to try and find any clues about what happened here.
The inn was one of the few buildings still in perfect repair, though the silence coming from it was in keeping with rest of the atmosphere. Walking in, we were greeted by the site of a cozy but underused common room. Wooden floors, chairs and tables scattered around in a vaguely organized manner, a small fire in the large fireplace, and inhabited only by a distracted bartender behind the bar and two men slouched over their drinks sitting at one of the tables.
Cana and I shared another look before heading over to the bartender and requesting dinner and a room for the night. George, as we found out was the name of the bartender and innkeeper, was a man of very few words. Any attempts at conversation were met with non-committal grunts.
By mutual agreement, Cana and I decided that whatever the situation here was, we would figure it out in the morning. For now, it had been quite some time since we’d slept in a bed, and I for one was going to enjoy it before getting on the business of healing my chest and figuring out what the hell was going on here.