The barge was a merchant ship, and a horde of suntanned men and women labored to load the vessel with crates of goods as we boarded. All of them did their best to avoid looking anyone in our group in the eyes, and acted as though we didn’t exist while simultaneously doing everything they could to ensure their presence didn’t offend us. Moments like this reminded me that most Delvers were nobility.
The merchant owner of the ship, Captain Mot, greeted us with much fanfare and hand-wringing, assuring us that, while his humble ship was only able to provide a modest measure of luxury, he’d gone to great efforts to ensure our privacy and had tasked two crewmen to serve as our personal attendants. He’d also made sure that wine aplenty was available, and that it was a fine vintage.
“A merlot favored by the crown prince, himself!” Captain Mot had proclaimed.
Once we were settled, Nuralie began working on her alchemy while Lito chain-smoked on the deck and became deeply engaged in conversation with Cole. Myria and Ashe received the wine, along with a few different bottles of various other alcoholic beverages, and joined Xim, Ember, and I in the training room I’d created.
The room was sparse, but I’d assigned the portion of my inventory replete with lethal instruments to appear inside the space. The walls were covered in the weapons, which floated at chest-height, held aloft by whatever invisible force kept my items in stasis. There was some amount of “oohs” and “aahs” at the sight, but the novelty of the effect quickly wore off in the eyes of the magically-jaded Delvers.
I was able to convince the group to start showing me the ropes of the different weapons. This quickly got out of hand as the group of supernaturally-talented women began having heated discussions over the advantages of their own chosen implements, and maligned those wielded by the others.
Well, it was mostly Myria and Ashe, whose liberal imbibement inflamed their passions, while Ember calmly commented only when she could provide insight. Xim was rotating through each of the weapons, reducing the crate the wine arrived in down to ever finer degrees of splinters, along with a few empty barrels that had been acquired from… somewhere. For demonstration purposes.
I eventually began the embarrassing process of displaying my complete lack of expertise to the women, one weapon at a time. I’d never been too concerned with making a fool of myself, but this was like a panel of expert biologists watching an adult toddler draw a picture of mitosis with crayons. There was no believable excuse for me to be this bad, especially since I was a friggin Delver. My pimped out armor was probably making me seem even more inept.
Was I a clown? The Delver jester? The cartoon character that survives having an anvil dropped on their head, but can’t catch a damn mouse to save their life? What the fuck was I doing?
“Wow, Arlo,” said Ashe. “Did you learn to use anything while training for the Creation Delve?”
“That’s not constructive, Ashe,” said Ember. “The first step to recovery is acknowledging that you need help.”
“Recovery from what?”
“From being bad at…” Ember gestured at me, “...everything.”
“Arlo’s not bad at punching things,” Xim offered. “But his main strength is survival.”
“Do any of them feel more comfortable to you, Arlo?” asked Myria.
I took a deep breath, shaking off the nerves and the mini internal meltdown.
“There’s a classic appeal to swords, but I’m not sure they’re for me. I think I’d need a lot of training before I could wield one without accidentally hurting myself or others.”
“Intrinsic skills will speed that up. Worry more about how natural it feels.”
I walked down the line of weapons I had sampled.
“Spears and polearms don’t mesh with my style. I need one hand free to cast, and Oblivion Orb is really close range. Axes are cool, but something about the way the axehead connects doesn’t feel great. Like it requires precision, but also feels clumsy. I’ve never really cared for daggers. The mace I have is pretty good. Just thunk ‘em and that’s all-she-wrote.”
I stopped in front of a single-handed war hammer. It was two-and-a-half feet long, with a hammer head on one side for bashing, a curved spike on the back for piercing and grappling, and a straight spike on the end for poking. I picked it up again. The weight felt right, the reach was comfortable, the swing had a good balance, and it absolutely wrecked the barrel I had smashed it with.
“Oh no,” said Ashe, “not that one!”
“Lito would approve,” said Myria, smiling. “I can ask if he’s taking on any students.”
“We haven’t even shot any bows yet,” said Ember, pouting a little.
“Hit ‘em with the heavy end!” said Xim. “That’s the style I like, too.”
Between Ashe, who mostly fought with one-handed swords, and Xim, who had a lot of experience with blunt weapons like her scepter, they were able to coach me through the basics. I walked through a few stances, moving the weapon in arcs and stepping into the next attack, keeping my balance as one swing flowed into another. It was more graceful than I’d expected from a literal hammer, but I was sure there was a big difference between the gentle dance of practice forms and the gruesome reality of bashing something to death.
I also asked Ember to get me started with bows, and she selected a basic longbow for me to start. It would take advantage of my Strength to some degree, since the weapon had a draw-weight of a hundred pounds, as opposed to a shortbow or recurve which had a draw weight closer to sixty pounds. There were tactical considerations as well, but if I was going to use a bow at all I wanted to make sure it had some range on it.
I absolutely sucked at it, but with Ember’s coaching I could at least land the shot in one of the large barrels at thirty feet.
I rounded out the day by having a fairly inebriated Myria show me a few Agility-related exercises focused on improving my mobility and, hopefully, helping me learn to dodge. She watched me fumble around for an hour, offering assistance here and there, then went off to find Ashe and some more booze.
Eventually everyone had left, and I was alone in the practice room doing cartwheels for the first time in my life. Before I knew it, I had a new System message.
Congratulations! By learning how to hit the broadside of a barn with a bow and spending several hours learning grade-school playground tricks, you have earned +1 to AGI.
I smiled at the notification and decided it was time to take a break. My stomach kindly reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and when I went above deck the sun was already setting.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Captain Mot was happy to serve us a hot meal wherever we chose to take it, so Nuralie, Xim, and I sat right on the deck near the bow of the ship with a few crate lids stacked atop one another to serve as our table. The food was a wild game bird that was near enough to turkey to earn the designation in my mind.
Along with the turkey were a few rooty vegetables cooked in broth with some citrus fruit mixed in. It was served with warm brown-bread and a light ale, then followed up with some soft candied berries with lightly sweetened jam wrapped up in a flakey tortilla. A sort of dessert burrito, which was something I didn’t know I was missing out on my entire life until I bit into one.
After the meal and conversation, I leaned back, setting my hands on the deck behind me and letting my head tilt up toward the sky. The sun had long since set and the stars were bright and plentiful. Several clusters glowed in a variety of primary colors, looking like a galactic sized lite-brite set. I didn’t know much about astrophysics, but I was pretty sure stars didn’t normally come in such a vivid array of hues. Then again, maybe they weren’t stars. Maybe the planet was surrounded by a big shiny net that the gods had strung arena-sized Christmas lights along.
The banks of the river swept gently up into sandy hills that met the bases of large cliffs. There were once several notable waterfalls along the river, but earth-shaper mages had taken it upon themselves to level the riverbed out to allow for easier passage via watercraft. The tops of the cliffs were the original shoreline.
In the skies above, a creature like a massive, floating manta ray passed by far overhead. The edges of its form swayed gently, and its body produced a bioluminescent glow. A long tail trailed behind it, looking deceptively large as it left a wave of spectral haze in its wake. It was beautiful, and I decided to find out more about it when I got the chance.
“Hey, Xim?” I said.
“Yeah?” she said through a mouthful of burrito dessert. Burssert? Dessito?
No. It was a Dessurito.
She was on her third.
“When I was talking to Seinnador, he mentioned my eyes, and I felt a bit dumb that I couldn’t tell him anything about what they meant. He seemed to know more about it than I do, but we didn’t get into it.”
“Yeah, dad wanted to wait to give you the talk.”
“I’m assuming not the one about the birds and the bees because I learned all that from MTV back in the late nineties.”
“Uh-huh. No, my dad takes the lead on sharing the history of our tribe and its beliefs with members who join from outside the tradition. It’s a pretty involved series of lessons, and involves a lot of visuals, so it’s easier to do in the Third Layer.”
“But the deal with the eyes isn't something I need to know about before then?”
Xim rubbed her hands together to dislodge the crumbs, then leaned in and squinted at my eyes. It was dark, and the cliffs blocked part of the sky, but she was easily visible under the starlight. Still, my eyes were mostly black. I couldn’t imagine there was much to see.
“Since this whole mess might delay our trip home, maybe you should learn a few things early. Still, manifesting a physical trait isn’t the same as receiving a revelation. Plenty of the tribe receive transformations that never manifest into anything greater. Even if you do, it can take awhile. Have you noticed any changes with your vision?”
“I don’t even know what kind of changes to look out for.”
“The Eye of Sam’lia sees, reveals, and embraces,” Xim said in a didactic tone with one finger in the air, marking each word like an attentive professor. It sounded like something she’d heard many times before. “A revelation of the Eye can carry an aspect from any of these three qualities.”
“What do you mean by ‘revelation’?”
She sighed.
“Put simply,” she said, returning to her normal cadence, “it’s a profound realization. Usually involving communion with a deity. It’s different for everybody”
“Uh, ok. What-”
“I really think dad should explain that part more. I suck at it. But, revelations come with perks! They’re easier to explain.”
“Perks?”
“For example, Seeing is the Eye’s first revelation. Being able to see things that others cannot, or seeing things in a different way. The simplest example is night vision.”
“The nights are pretty bright here already. I guess with cloud cover or in a forest it…” Xim was giving me one of her enthusiastic smiles.
“How bright is it, mister ‘I don’t know what changes to look out for’?”
I ignored the jab and peered around the deck.
“I don’t know. Not as bright as it is during the day, but I can make out most things. Look, I don’t know. Where I come from…” I stopped myself, remembering that Nuralie wasn’t in on the Secret. “I figured nights here were just bright. I didn’t know it might be from some special magic eyeballs I got from a ritual or… revelation. It’s not like I’ve had any profound experiences lately.”
“Sure about that?” asked Xim, looking at me doubtfully. “Can you see the cliffs? Not just the tops where they block the sky, but the faces.”
“Yeah. Can you?”
“Oh, sure. How about you, Nuralie?”
Pause.
“Yes. Well enough.”
“Then why did you ask?”
“Nuralie’s a loson. They’ve lived in swamps with canopies that block out the sky for eons. All of them can see pretty well in the dark. In the Third Layer the day-night cycle works… differently than it does here in the First. Most of us native to the Third have some level of darkvision. I bet if you ask any of the Hiwardians here they’d say it was a pretty dark night, and none of them would be able to see the cliffs unless they use magic.”
“Ok, so maybe I have better sight in the dark because of the eyes. Or maybe Hiwardians have naturally bad eyesight. I’m not Hiwardian, so I don’t have much of a baseline there.”
Xim shrugged.
“That’s true.”
Still, I liked the idea of seeing in the dark. When I thought about it, I hadn’t been in an environment I found to be truly dark since I left the Creation Delve.
“What about the other two categories?”
“Reveal is an extension of the first. It not only lets you see things that others cannot, but also lets you reveal what you see to others.”
“Like, showing them what I can see? Sharing my vision?”
“That can be part of it, yeah.”
“Right there in the name, I guess. Not sure if I’ve Revealed anything so far.”
“Something to think about, then. As for the third, the Eye Embraces by imparting a portion of its own domain onto all those it sees.”
“It does what now?”
“I could have said that better. The Eye is how we travel to and from the Third Layer. All of the Third Layer lies under the gaze of the Eye and everything under the gaze of the Eye lies within the Third Layer. To step into the First, we beseech the Eye to turn away from us. When we wish to return to the Third, we ask it to look upon us again.”
“That’s kind of creepy, no offense. I mean, it’s creepy in a cool way. Not creepy in a pervy way, just neat. The Eye seems… neat.” I grimaced as I waited for the social fallout from that snafu.
Xim laughed.
“Don’t worry, I get it. As far as what Embracing can do for a person gifted by the Eye, it varies. I’ve heard stories of people who could create a domain that they could will other people into. The person affected would still be visible and exist to everyone outside of the domain, but the laws of reality might become distorted for that person. Like never-ending hallways, or stairs that always take you to the same floor no matter how many times you climb them. Every pebble on the ground appearing as large as a mountain, though you could still step on them without growing any larger.”
“That sounds like dream logic. That’s also a very scary ability. And not in an ‘I think scary things are cool’ kind of way. Legitimately scary.”
“I’ve only heard legends about that ability. No idea if anyone has ever possessed it, but it’s still taught.”
“Well, if I ever accidentally create a mind-warping dreamscape and abduct unwitting victims into it, I’ll let you know.” My thoughts turned uneasily to the Pocket Delve. “As far as seeing things others can’t…” I reached down and drew my amulet from beneath my armor.
Traveler’s Amulet
This is an evolving item.
Current Level: Crumb-Cruncher
Effects:
1) It’s stylish.
2) Soul-Sight: You can perceive the strength of the souls around you. This effect is set to the lowest setting by default. You can intensify it by concentrating, but be careful. Some souls are better seen from a distance.
Make “Soul-Sight” your own to unlock this amulet’s next effect.
Would the Eye’s gift let me unlock the next ability for this amulet?