The mesa was an absolute bitch. Sheer stone walls rose from the forest. Vines crawled up the sides for a hundred paces or more, but the thing was four or five hundred paces tall.
“Is that a-” goat wasn’t a word in their language.
“A surefoot,” Jim said glancing at the animal that was standing on a wall thirty paces from us chewing on a vine.
It was a goat, anything that could stand on a sheer cliff like that was a goat. Or a spider. Spiders could probably stick to a wall like that.
I spotted six of the goats as I studied the cliff.
“I assume there are stairs or something?”
“Ramps,” Jim said, “but I’m not sure where.
We circled until we found a cave that might contain a ramp cut into the mesa or possibly a huge cave bear that would eat us all.
Instead we found badger sort of things that didn’t seem to care if we were there so long as we stayed away from the giant wicker balls. They were large enough a normal sized man could stand inside.
Jim had only said, “Stay away from their balls,” when we entered. Which caused me to smile.
“Oh,” I said when I saw the wicker looking balls.
It looked like they wove the balls out of thorn bushes or some other sort of long thin arm that dried stiff. There were small tunnels, like the entrance to igloos near the bottom.
“Their young are in there?” I asked.
Jim glanced at me and then at the balls.
“Waste, vines, leaves, branches, grass, some roots. They fill the balls with food and then capture po-pos and eat their young as they emerge.”
“Po-pos?”
“Insect.” Jim said.
“Soft worm that turns into hard shelled beetle,” Mrs. Kine said, “The worms crawl out when they are ready to transform. They eat them.”
“Let me guess,” I said looking at the low lumping fur balls that watched us, “they can’t eat the plants for whatever reason, poison or something?”
Jim laughed, “Graybacks eat everything, but they don’t like rain or the ground. Mostly they are in the tree tops of the very tall trees. I’m not sure what they are doing here.”
We learned why in about fifty strides.
The end of the cave turned into the ramp up. It was clogged with the grayback balls.
“We could burn them out,” Jim said.
“We could check the other tunnels,” Mrs. Kine suggested strongly.
Jim studied the tunnel, perhaps trying to see how how deep the balls went. The wall in front of us was solid.
We circled the mesa.
The second tunnel started up the outside and then turned into the mesa as it made a switch back.
“Let me see what kind,” Jim said when we found another wall, this time spider web that covered the whole tunnel.
He used his club like a fork in spaghetti, jabbing it in and then spinning it to draw the webbing onto it. He backed up with a ball of webbing that looked like cotton candy.
Twenty seconds later big softball sized spiders came in great numbers, at least fifty, to repair the webbing.
As they moved over the webbing I noticed they hadn’t made a solid wall of webbing after all. It was just a smaller tunnel in the middle, like a long funnel in the center of the tunnel.
“They are harmless enough,” Jim said, “but there are enough of them to wrap us up. We’d have to go up at night when they leave the nest to feed. And that assumes they only took over the first fifty strides or so.”
“Why fifty,” Mrs. Kine asked.
“If the nest is any bigger than that they won’t send out all the adults and there were be more guarding it. Let’s check the third ramp.”
“Jumping vines,” I said recognizing the venomous plants in the mouth of the next tunnel.
“We can burn these out,” Jim agreed.
He had some sort of wind spell. We built a fire a good distance away and then used long branches to push the burning wood closer and closer and he stood then with his hand outstretched like a child trying to do a magic trick.
Except wide blew past him slightly stronger than a breeze.
It was enough to help the fire grow and direct the heat and smoke into the vines.
They snapped and jerked but they did have limited range.
We were about out of wood when we pushed the pile through the back of the wall of vines.
We piled the rest of the collected wood on and Jim swung his mace at the remaining vines, knocking them down and pushing them into the fire.
Some still snapped and jumped though free of their anchor points they didn’t come close to him at all.
The tunnel wasn’t free of damage, but there were no sections that had collapsed completely.
There were other sections blocked though. One with bees. There must have been a crack in the wall to the exterior. The bees looked very much like Earth bees, except instead of yellow and black these were red and black. Which sort of made them look meaner.
They didn’t sting here at all. Jim took a handful of honeycomb and then started jogging up the ramp. Mrs. Kine followed his example and so I did as well.
I was last, and therefor learned how the bees defended their hive here. I was swarmed by them. Absolutely covered to the point where I had to keep swiping at my face to clear my eyes so I could see and my mouth so I could breathe.
There were two sections outside with no railing or wall. Mrs. Kine waved me over but I called her back to where I was wisely staying near the wall.
“What if the ground gives out!” I snapped.
“We didn’t even get that close to the edge,” she said softly.
I was happier when the ramp curved back inside the stone and all we had to do was climb a steep ramp.
Two switch backs later and we had to go up the edge because the ground was slick with algae of some sort. Water dripped at the top of the ramp and the algae moss hybrid stuff coated the floor. It would hold for a moment then slide free.
When we started the climb that had been tricky and funny, but I couldn’t imagine a slide the full fifty strides.
From there it was clear all the way up.
“We have to haul water up this?”
“Shouldn’t have to,” Jim said, “there are rain water collection ponds shaped by stone shapers. Or so the stories go.”
The ponds were several hundred paces long and waist deep, though there were shallow fingers branching off that were knee deep or shallower.
There were frogs and fish and plants.
Jim had us cleaning out the goop in the fingers, which mostly meant pulling the aquatic plants out by the handfuls.
Some of which he chopped up and we ate.
The fish were easy to catch. You just got in one side of the pond and walked along it. They swam away from you until they were bunched up so tightly the person out side could just grab the and toss them out.
“I just got a skill in Hand Fishing!” Mrs. Kine called out.
“Third tier agility!”
Eventually it was my turn. I focused on trying to skill up at first, then failing to even catch a fish I just tried to focus on getting one out of the water.
Eventually I got a system down where I tried to slide by hands up to catch on fins or gills and fling them out of the water.
“Skill Learned: Hand Fishing.”
“Whoa!” I screamed as I jerked around.
The voice had been clear, but layered. A hundred thousand voices speaking as many languages. The meaning coming to me directly.”
“Did you get a skill?!” Mrs. Kine asked as she clapped.
“I heard a voice!” I said.
She laughed and left her position allowed the fish to stream pass Jim and head back the other direction in the pond.
“You need to open your book,” she said when she reached me.
She was in the pond about waist deep which put her head just below my belt. She reached up to my shirt and with a series of grabs and pulls, hand me bent over low enough so she could kiss me.
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We tried that night, and then all the next day but I still failed to open the book.
“Think about song,” she said after lunch, “blind people can’t read the book, but some can hear singing.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, “And how are they blind? I thought healing potions cured just about everything.”
“Some are born without eyes, or have them destroyed with holy or unholy magics. Most potions are arcane magic, which cannot heal holy damage if it lingers. Sometimes that takes years, and then between one day and the next a healing potion will work. Now close your eyes and ask about your attributes.”
We tried until dinner.
“Did you try the reflections?” Jim asked.
After dinner I stared into the tiny mirror he carried to identify the rarity of cards or enchanted items.
He told us twice he wasn’t sure if it was true, but he heard a story about a man who had to look into a mirror as his information was written on his forehead in tattoo ink.
“Why so many different ways?” I asked as we lay there staring up at the rings.
At night the temperature dropped enough this high that the blankets were needed. There were no trees to break the wind and the grasses and bushes were low things.
There were buildings but they were gutted and mostly destroyed. Instead we used a small knee high wall as a wind break and slept near that.
Jim slept near the ramp both to be on guard and to give us some privacy.
“Whatever is natural to the person,” she said with a shrug.
“I got it,” I said with a small laugh. That had been the information I needed.
What was natural to be was a computer screen.
This looked like some sort of holographic screen that hung at arm’s reach. It was two dimensional and titled across the top was the word INTERFACE.
Below were three tabs like you might find on a web browser.
Attributes, Skills, Class Skills.
The Skills tab in the center was open with a single line on the page displayed.
Hand Fishing (AGI 3) : 1
I switched to the Class Skills tab/page without realizing how I'd done it. Then repeated the action back to Skills tab with no issues. The Class Skills page was empty.
And Attributes was a bit confusing.
Agility : 188
Dexterity : 402
Strength : 354
Constitution : 201
Wisdom : 344
Intelligence : 605
***
Health : 603
Stamina : 422
Mana : 922
H.reg / hour : 55
S.reg / hour : 58
M.reg / hour : 94
“How much Stamina do you have?” I asked.
She slapped me playfully and I saw her blushing. I blushed.
“I meant- It looks like the regeneration numbers are the addition of two attributes and then dividing my ten. Health regeneration is Strength and Constitution added up and divided by ten, Stamina is dexterity and agility, and mana is wisdom and intelligence.
“But health stamina and mana numbers are all over the place. My nine hundred twenty-two mana looks to be about the same as adding my wisdom and intelligence up-
I stopped because she turned up on her side and put a hand on my chest.
“What are your attributes? No teasing,” she said.
I read them off and her eyes got wide.
“You have four attributes over three hundred and one over six hundred!” she was excited but whispering. She’d also drawn in closer to me and had my shirt in a fish.
“I have two attributes over three hundred, Dexterity and Constitution. I have four hundred and five health, three hundred and eighty stamina, and two hundred mana. You have almost a thousand!”
She confirmed twice I had one General Skill and no Class Skills.
Oddly enough when I brought the interface back up I noticed the tab that had said Skills, had changed to General Skills.
“It must be your body,” she said slowly. There had been six minutes of awkward silence as she thought of different things.
“Or augments!” she said suddenly, “what if he did bubble excursions and had a great number of augments?”
“I don’t have a tab for that,” I said.
As I said it I felt a sort of pulling or pushing, and urge to close the interface. So I did.
“You just need to imagine a place in your book for the information to display,” she said.
Sure enough with the interface screen gone I imagined a tab for augments, and it was there when I opened the interface screen. There was an augment listed.
Conversion Matrix : English -> Turkish.
I imagined clicking on it, or right clicking, or somehow putting a small question mark I could hover my non-existent mouse cursor over.
There was resistance a lot of it.
I closed the interface and then didn’t specify the how, but willing into existence an information page.
The interface opened to a page titled with the augment, Conversion Matrix : English -> Turkish. Above it in a smaller font was a path structure of Interface/Augment/Conversion Matrix
Total conversion of English language, conceptual structuring, and engrams into Turkish. Divine Augment.
I read the description to Mrs. Kine. She didn’t say anything for a while.
“You should never repeat that again. Don’t tell anyone you have a divine augment, don’t tell anyone you have an augment at all. I don’t think any are really transferable but that won’t stop some people from trying.”
“You took over his body,” she said sometime later, “and many priests say the body is just a reflection of the soul. It’s why healing magic can’t heal some holy damage, because it damages the soul, the blue print the body tries to conform to. At least that was how we were taught. I never really believed that stuff. Everyone thinks it’s just skills. Make the numbers go up and the body gets stronger and healthier. Even some of the priests think that.”
“Why did I get tired first,” I said, “if you have less stamina than me. Why did I get tired.”
“My running skill,” she paused and opened an invisible book swiping pages until she glanced at it. Then she tossed it away which made me chuckle.
“It lowers my stamina drain while running by forty-eight percent.”
“But you took his body, and maybe his attributes, but not his skills. Even if he raised his intelligence by raising his Mathematics skill you might-”
“There is a Mathematics skill?” I cut in.
“Yes.”
“Just one, or like geometry, and trigonometry, and algebra, and-” Calculus wasn’t a thing apparently.
“What are those?”
“Branches of mathematics.”
“Branches?”
“Some one might study their whole life to learn geometry, and another person might study sets or something like that. They can both be experts in their field and yet not be able to talk to the other because the mathematics is so different.”
She was looking up at me I could tell so I looked down at her.
“Maybe they are different,” she said slowly, “my mother said her mother had different skills for different types of sewing. I only have Sewing and Embroidery, but I suppose their might be knitting, quilting, and darning or the like. Yet if you sewed something and embroidered something you might get skills in just sewing. Then again sometimes not. The rules are odd. But,” and her tone changed with that word, “if I could finish what I was saying.”
She paused, and even though I knew she wasn’t asking for permission I opened my mouth to say something like, “but of course dear.”
In the end I closed my mouth without speaking, perhaps because of my high wisdom score.
“If he raised his intelligence with mathematics, I wonder if you can raise it with the same skill. Or if when you earn ten ranks in the skill if the attributes are not added because they are already accounted for.”
“In his journal he listed his Scribe skill, but I can’t remember what it was at. But I suppose I could test that theory with that skill.”
“Theory?” she asked.
It was one of the words someone who spoke this language knew, that she herself did not.
I explained the scientific method quickly.
“Basically you get an idea. Then create a test to try to test if the idea is true or not. If it is provably true you accept it as fact and move on, if it is provably false you accept that and move on. If it isn’t provable either way, and this is where you have to be sure, you try to design a better test. In this case I have a good idea he had a specific skill to at least rank ten. I’ll write down my attributes before I reach rank ten in Scribe. Then once I reach it I should earn attribute points in intelligence. I can check and see if I did earn more or didn’t. We can’t prove anything either way, but if it does add attribute points then we can guess it will be easy for me to earn attribute points with any new skill. If I don’t well we will have more testing to do.”
“But none of that explains what the word theory is.”
“Oh. The theory is the idea to test with the explanation attached. Your theory is I may not earn the attributes because I already earned them even if I no longer have the skill that gave me those attribute points.”
“I feel like I’m six all over again- what?”
I must have shuddered or she heard a change in my heartbeat.
“The year thing,” I said, “I still think of six or even ten as children. Like you think of a three or five year old.”
I felt her nod.
“I feel younger,” she said, “and excited again. I hope we can learn some skills together and perhaps I can learn how to train you in sewing. Don’t try to learn sewing on your own I don’t want you to level past where I can help you.”
I squeezed her.
“How long do people live?” I asked when I realized I didn’t know. They might have years twice as long but if they died at forty that was the same as dying at eighty.
“Purists die much sooner, in their fifties or sixties, but for us, for most everyone who is awakened, a hundred and ten, hundred and twenty if they have the funds for potions and cures at the end.”
“That’s-” I swallowed, “That is a long time.”
“Is it? Some live to be a hundred and thirty but not many, I think the oldest person every was one hundred and fifty-three. How long did your people live?”
“Eighty if we were lucky. Sixty if we weren’t.”
“That’s forty years old? We’ll barely be parents at forty,” she said.
She shifted to look up at me again.
“I thought most people married at ten?”
She didn’t look away but I could tell she was embarrassed for marrying later.
“Yes. But,” she cleared her throat and looked up at the sky. Her voice took on a lecturing tone as if educating a child. I tried not to be offended.
“While the body is developed enough for- to be considered an adult. Internally the females are not ready to get pregnant until around twenty-five years old. Males don’t create viable seed until a few years after that. Most couples are still establishing homes and preparing for children at that time, and choose to put off having children until thirty-seven or thirty-eight.”
“How?” I asked.
“How what?”
“How do they put off pregnancy? Do you have-” I cycled through condoms, birth control, and even abortion, but the none of the words translated.
We spoke back and forth until the understanding came to us both. Their people could just, not get pregnant. Getting pregnant required bathing in warm water for hours every day and some other environmental conditions.
She had some unreadable emotion at the idea of humans getting pregnant, or possibly pregnant any time they had sex.
“So your people don’t have sex often? Unless they wish to breed?”
I laughed a bit, but when she shifted to look at me I realized she might think I was laughing at her.
“It’s funny because people had sex even when then didn’t want to breed and still got pregnant. We had several different systems for not getting pregnant in fact. But in general, people enjoyed sex. I’m not sure how it works here but my people had orgasms,” well the word existed.
“Since the word exists I assume your people have the same?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Both men and women?”
She shifted again and then said, “Yes. Was it not the same for your people?”
“It was,” I said, “but I didn’t want to make assumptions. Since we are getting into this. How often do married couples tend to have sex?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she answered quickly.
We talked for a bit more. I asked the blunt questions and she did as well. We were both a bit surprised a few times.
“You didn’t have the stupor?” she asked.
“I mean people fell asleep after sex, but not some sort of involuntary coma like you are describing.”
“It is not a coma,” she said seriously, “it is the stupor. A time of rest and recuperation.”
“So sex once a night,” I said, “because you all sleep afterward.”
“Your people could have sex more than once a night?” she asked in a scandalous whisper.
“Yes.”
There was some silence.
“And you were never married?”
“No.”
Another pause.
“I’m sorry you did not get to experience multiple sexes a night,” she said seriously.
I almost said something, but realized that even asking if sex outside of marriage was a thing there I’d be implying it was for us. It could be a very big taboo, or perhaps some sort of biological bonding. Didn’t swans mate for life back on Earth? What would happen if these people did the same and she found out I wasn’t a virgin.
Then again if this wasn’t the perfect ‘What happens in different simulated realties stays in different simulated realities,’ moment I didn’t know what would be.
Besides this body might be a virgin or unbonded or whatever. He had married her after all.
“I think I am ready,” she said softly, “to have sex I mean. Not now!” she said quickly.
“Not here, but when we make a home. When we are in private. I’m ready to share that with you.”
“Thank you,” I said. I kissed the top of her head.
“I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but I’m not sure I’m ready yet,” I said slowly worried that the words might cause problems but also worried that she was somehow still a child. If they lived to be a hundred and twenty, and she was twelve and I was thirteen, the equivalent of twenty-four and twenty-six on Earth. That was also only a twelfth of their total lifespan. So if a human lived to be eighty, then ten percent was eight and ten percent of that was point eight. Double that to one-point-six. A twelfth of a human lifespan only made her nine-point-six years old.
I needed Chidi for this shit.
“You won’t hurt my feelings,” she said “I am not sure how it was on your world, but here marriages are often arranged, and it takes time for both husband and wife to decide to- to decide on the timing of different things. My feelings are not hurt if I am ready before you are. Just like you would not be hurt if you were ready before I was. Would you be hurt?” she asked as if just realizing I might be.
“No,” I said with the certainty she needed to hear.