It has become second nature. Pull a handful of blood iron grass from the soaking vessel. Pull, twist, bind, loop around the framing anchor. Here’s where the mana must flow, that now familiar feeling deep in your belly, like utter certainty crossed with satiation. Cross seven times and loop again, over, under, two, five, back to three. Nothing fancy, just making a little mana highway. Join your brothers, around and around we go. Tie it off, tie it on. Grab another handful, feel the cool liquid, a mix of bile, blood and water. Don’t think about it running down your wrist, or the smell. No room for that in the flow, effortless, faster than ever, with that little bit of extra mana, the kind that feels like a beer at the end of a good day’s work. Twist, loop, bind.
Weave.
Mr. Sennit put the completed shield down, ready to cure in the next day’s hot sun and looked around the little campsite. The fire was roaring, sending warmth and more than a little smoke his way, through the narrow entrance of the grass hut he had constructed a few days prior. The building was small, but tough as nails, and short of a stampede of some of the Great Grass Sea’s larger inhabitants, he felt utterly secure in its cramped confines.
Who needs wood, stone or steel, he thought to himself, when you have magic and grass?
That reminded him of a little something, and he began to cast around for his pipe.
“Where did I put that thing?” he muttered.
He heard the now familiar cough of a horned hyaenodon over the crackling flames, a sound that used to send shivers down his spine and make his hands sweat as they wrung his ironwood club. Now he gave a little self-deprecating chuckle.
Maybe it’s time to log out for a spell, take care of some body business.
It was getting harder and harder for him to leave the Inside though. On the Outside, he had more aches and pains, more troubles with his eyes. His hearing wasn’t doing too good either. On the Inside he felt powerful. Successful in a way he had never experienced across the expanse of his life. Only the day before, he had reached level eighteen, an unthinkable height after more than fifty years stuck at level five.
“Ho the camp!” Anda’s voice reached his ears. “You still in there, Weaver?”
“It’s about time, Pohon,” he called back. “Thought you forgot about me.”
“Sometime, I’m going to get you to tell me what that means,” Anda grumbled. “Complications of life,” he added, by way of apology. “Couldn’t get a break for a bit there. It’s a shame it’s dark, or we could head out.”
“Uh huh. Can’t say I’d be up for that.” Mr. Sennit emerged from the small opening in his little hut, nearly singing his eyebrows as the wind carried the flames up to the entrance. Thanks to the properties of the stand of fire weed where they had made camp, there was no real danger of the fire spreading, or his hut burning, for that matter. The local wildlife was terrified of fire, even during the current wet season, which was why he was using the flames as his door, give or take a few feet.
“How’s the crafting going?” Anda asked.
“Not bad.” He pulled out a shield he had made the day previous and Anda gave a low whistle.
----------------------------------------
Woven Shield of Absorption
Crafted by a Master Weaver
Attracts certain on-target blows and missile attacks
Absorbs up to 10x user’s Shield V.P. in damage per attack
Takes Item damage
???
----------------------------------------
“That's… well, I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Not the most durable thing, but in the hands of a Shield Master...” said Anda. “It’s got a mystery effect too. I don’t suppose you know what that is?”
Mr. Sennit shook his head. “That’s the thing about crafting from your gut, I guess. You never quite know how things are going to come out on the magic side. I just do what seems right. I was hoping you could take it for a test drive, maybe figure it out,” he said as he handed the shield over.
“I’d be honored. Skill based multipliers are incredibly rare. Most shields I’ve used had a fixed number for damage abatement. Even if it only lasts for a few battles, the clans would kill to get their hands on something like this. I can’t imagine what it would go for at auction,” Anda replied.
Mr. Sennit shrugged. “Guess we’ll see. Took me a whole day to make, so I’m not exactly going to be cranking them out. I’ve got one more I made today, but that one I sped up the process, so it’s not as good. For all I know, they’ll fall apart after a few good hits.”
Anda clasped the shield to his arm and swung it around. “So light though,” he noted. “Think you could make armor?”
“Pieces, maybe. Probably not worth it if it breaks too easy.” Mr. Sennit shrugged. “Anyway, what’s the plan, head out at sun up?”
“Outside permitting. These parts get a bit frisky at night, but that’s nothing compared to the Plains.” Anda pulled a long spear from his inventory. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a shield to test drive, and plenty of volunteers waiting for a crack at it.”
***
One person’s wall is another’s path, Lilijoy thought as she strolled comfortably through the Boiling Plains. With her new Earth Source and its attached spell, she was able to raise a low ridge of passable stone and earth anytime she needed, as long as she walked slowly enough to keep her mana from running out. Only once in a while was she forced to stop and meditate, usually when she needed raise a taller wall to cross a deeper pool or muddy area.
The only problem was that she had no idea where she was going.
Well, that and the constant interruptions by the local denizens. It seemed that the Boiling Plains was a happening place after dark. So far she had fought off a geyser squid that she enraged when she bisected its home, a small pack of salamander wolves, and a host of airborne assailants seeking to sample her precious bodily fluids.
The latter took several forms, but her favorite were the globular air jellies that hovered serenely about ten feet above her head, their dangling tendrils transparent to her eyes, but not to some of her other senses. To her mana sense the air was filled with thousands of glowing pulsating blobs of color in every direction, and it was trivial for her to avoid the slow moving creatures, so far at least. Not so with the leaping star lampreys, creatures more mouth than body that whirled through the air whenever they sensed her passage, their tails split into five blades.
She was still learning how to spot them before they ambushed her. They hunkered down in shallow pools, looking almost like flower buds with tails bunched beneath them in a little symmetrical bundle. Fortunately, they made a bit of commotion when they leapt, and her Flash was more than adequate to dodge.
She looked out, across the landscape, hoping for some sign of the orc’s camps. Unfortunately, smoke was a ubiquitous fact of the Boiling Plains, and the air was full of hovering jellies and fire mana. Turning off her mana sense allowed her to see glowing spots on the horizon here and there. She headed towards the closest, hoping it was campfires and not wildfires.
She made slow but steady progress, even while juggling her Outside activities. There, she, Nykka and Maria had spent hours creeping through the least populated parts of the vast West Leg, moving Lilijoy’s sensory domain as they went. They had decided that leaving the huge building would be impossible, for the time being, as Walden had more than enough people to monitor the exits, inside and out. Several times they were passed by small groups wearing Walden badges, but so far Lilijoy’s improvised stealth field had held up.
The entire time, she did her best not to think too hard about her meeting with Nandi. Balancing on long ridges of stone with bubbling, steaming mud on either side, while dodging spinning lamprey helicopters and transparent dangling tendrils, and simultaneously repositioning thousands of midges to intercept and manipulate and generate augsight signals was stretching Lilijoy’s processing ability, and left little room for distraction.
Still, there were times when the halls were clear, when the ground was… ground, and in those moments she couldn’t stop herself. There was one thought in particular that was bothering her.
What does Nandi get from all of this? Why does he want me to remain, eventually growing to rival even himself?
It was a distressing thought, and she wished she could return to that time of innocence, that time when she would assume it was because he liked her. Because she was special.
But wishing didn’t make it so. The lower and middle levels of Guardian’s mind seemed to operate on Darwinian, free market principles, at least in part. This was, she understood from her own research, not terribly different from how her own organic brain had developed. Neurons and groups of neurons could both cooperate and compete. Some thrived, and some were pruned away. Within the organic structure, thoughts themselves performed similar dances of offense and defense, developing complicated mutually enforcing structures to keep competitors at bay, and transmitting those structures from mind to mind.
The original meme. Self-preservation is the root of self.
It bothered her that Nandi assumed she could somehow integrate herself into the mind of Guardian itself, somehow joining as part of the choir of competing superintelligences that lived and struggled for their existence within the greater noos. For reasons she didn’t understand, she suspected that Nandi saw her as some kind of eventual antidote to the threat of Purgatory.
No, that can’t be right, she thought, her thoughts swiveling to contradict themselves. Nandi is a fundamentally benign being. I’m sure he is using my growth as a source for his own path.
Oh dear, she realized, I’m a pokemon. Lilijoy, I choose you!
A message from Attaboy arrived, addressed to her and Nykka, interrupting her thoughts.
Oh no. Now what has he done? was her first thought.
Lilijoy didn’t reply immediately, because she had already messaged Marcus, and was awaiting his reply.
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Oh dear. Lilijoy thought. That is so not the way to get Attaboy to behave. She would have intervened, but she couldn’t for the life of her think of any way to get Attaboy to behave.
Marcus’ reply came.
Lilijoy filled him in on Attaboy’s discovery, not sure how he might react.
Literally, Lilijoy thought. She didn’t think it would be in good taste at all to share that with Marcus.
Marcus didn’t reply immediately. Lilijoy arranged her midges and, on the Inside, summoned a short length of wall. The air jellies were growing more abundant as she advanced to her goal, and she saw a small cluster of them feeding off to the side, their dangling tendrils alight with siphoned mana from an indistinguishable source. Despite the ever-present danger, the scene was peaceful, beautiful, the air in every direction filled with billows of faintly illuminated steam and smoke and the floating globes. It felt as she she was on the bottom of a shallow and abundant pastel sea.
Then the shadow arrived, as if cast from a great floating predator. Between her and her goal a swath of jellies winked out and the steam and smoke were blocked. Lilijoy blinked, reversing her perspective, for the patch of darkness was not above, but below. Something large, huge even, was moving in the distance. Already her ears were picking up the sound of displaced mud, splashing water and grinding stone. Her feet felt a low groan of ultrasound, and her Earthen Sense was briefly overwhelmed, deafened, blinded by an overpowering presence.
She couldn’t tell if this was what made her knees tremble, or if it was instinctive fear of an amorphous terror of the night coming for her. A quick check of her options told her that logging out wasn’t possible, not consequence free anyway. She didn’t like the odds of her unattended body surviving in this environment. She considered retreating to her Trial Space, but there were consequences to that as well, she had recently learned.
Fight or flight? Maybe it’s just prowling around.
It didn’t seem that way though. It was moving toward her rapidly, leaving a line of darkness in its wake. It was looking like fight was her only option, and that was a problem. Lilijoy had come to realize that fighting in and of itself held little joy for her. She enjoyed the dance, the challenge and the chance to measure her growth, but not the ugly violations of skin and flesh, given or received. It was becoming more difficult for her to turn off her empathy for her opponents.
That and the fact that of her many powers and precocities, none were able to dish out the kind of damage it would take to vanquish a large opponent. Now that she considered it, the two issues weren’t exactly separate.
The ground was starting to vibrate, a fact obvious even without Earthen Sense.
I wonder if it will be friends with me, the whale thought.
She chuckled to herself.
The horizon changed in front of her, and indeed, it was the ground coming to meet her.
Spawn of the Land Wyrm, Level ???
Source Beast
Regional Lord
What, I don’t get to know its disposition? Also, is this some kind of deliberate commentary on the Archon’s part, throwing an Earth Source at me hours after I finally got one?
Maybe I can make a wall out of it?
She pushed her attempts to make light of the situation to a back corner of her mind. She had a challenge in front of her, and it was time to dance.
“Hold my beer,” she said to a startled Nykka on the Outside. “I’ll explain later.” She allowed herself to sit down, only leaving enough of herself to maintain the sensory domain.
Then she brought all her thoughts to bear on the battle to come. There were no stakes here, beyond avoiding another increment to her death counter. No one’s fate hung in the balance.
Or did it?
What made one instant more valuable than any other? Was the last thought before death the most important? Did she need to wait for the winds of fate to carry her over a cliff before finally learning to fly?
Every instant was a knife, and the present was the cutting sharpness. Anticipation of the future, regret for the past hung bound together on that trembling edge. Power was not in commands obeyed, or damage dealt, lives ended or preserved. Power resided in understanding the severing of past and future, understanding the meaning of the present moment.
Lilijoy knew this was not an epiphany, not enlightenment, not really. An insight, perhaps a way of organizing her thoughts was all it could be for now. Still it lead her to a certain conclusion.
If power resided in the instant, than it wouldn’t hurt to have more instants.
With a thought she seized all her direct free points, those she had hoarded against future regret, against the possibility of unforseen joyous outcomes. There were forty of them now, rewards for bending the strictures of reality on the Inside twice over. She spent them, and there was not regret, not anticipation, only the instant understanding that her Path was not as simple as she had thought. Her soul vortex spun, twisting impossibly, and while it never been a true vortex like a tornado or the draining of a tub, now it folded and reached across itself in a knot of flowing energies an order of magnitude more complex.
Watching it gave her the insight that her soul space was not simply a manifestation of her system for storing and sorting her experiences. It was her, or was becoming her, a tool for understanding her identity, for understanding what she meant. A mirror that looked back, for all meanings of the word, reflecting her awareness of the past.
She pulled out her sling.
It was only a little ridiculous, she knew, the image she must present. A tiny wisp of a human wielding a sling against a looming mountain. David, eat your heart out, she thought. Still, she began to load and release, load and release, faster and faster. Her sling was one she had made for herself recently, during a rest period in the cold swamp. It was… an experiment, one she hadn’t expected to be using in combat. Not unlike her new Flash trait, now a ridiculous eighty-eight.
The creature reared up, a pile of mud and debris thrusting skyward, a great gaping void of a mouth forming. It was too large for her to get an accurate sense of its totality, but she thought she saw legs. That will do.
She ran, the sling already tucked away. Her feet pushed at the crusty earth and it took all her strength to control her body at her new speed. She had learned from the past hours and her previous session; her system was already showing her where to step, anticipating her trajectory across treacherous ground. Behind her, the beast released a great stream of hissing, bubbling liquid from its newly revealed orifice, showering the area where she had just been with what could only be acid.
It is really not messing around. Obviously not planning on having me for a snack with that opening move. Maybe the Archon really is showing me who’s boss.
It wasn’t worth speculating at the moment, but she did find it exceedingly odd that the strongest creature in the entire region had just made a beeline for her.
Then she was at the foot, a broad scaled stump from which four claws projected. It would cover her whole body spread-eagled with room to spare, should she find herself so unlucky. Even as she was scrambling up the rough, knobbed surface of the leg, she noted that the foot, and leg for that matter, still seemed oddly small compared to the rest of the huge mass she was scaling.
The air filled with another massive rumble, more felt than heard, a foghorn with a bass so profound she could feel the impact of each wavelength like a jackhammer. Her teeth rattled and her hands became numb, forcing her to stop climbing and cling with all her might while the Land Wyrm Spawn’s call continued. She couldn’t help wondering what it would be like when fully grown.
Soon the night was still again, save for a constant cracking and clatter from soil and rocks falling off the creature’s body. It held itself above the ground still, and Lilijoy heard the sound of wind as it inhaled. She cranked up her Stealth to disguise her scent, in case that was what it was doing, and resumed her climb, now slow and careful.
She had just reached what she thought was something like a shoulder when the creature lurched into motion, stomping its other forelimb with a thunderous steaming crash into a sulfurous pool. With an occasional low rumble, it lowered its head, even as she reached up and grabbed one of the many rapidly growing vines ornamenting the pile of crusted dirt and rock it carried on its body. It really was like a mobile mountain, or a good sized hill anyway. She was still trying to piece together its appearance from various glimpses she had caught during its approach and her subsequent scramble onto its body, but she thought it had at least three pairs of legs and a craggy, irregular head like a tortoise crossed with a morning star.
All across its massive back, vines and other plants were sprouting. That was her doing. A little side project she had been tinkering with. Plants weren’t hard to convince to grow fast, as long as they had a little help, though the kind of explosive growth necessary for crowd control remained in the province of fantasy. For some time, Lilijoy had been wracking her brain on just how she could use her massive Charm: Plants trait. It wasn’t until she made her new sling that the idea had struck.
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Sling of the Farmer
+10 to Charm: Plant when used
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She wasn’t proud of her initial reaction to the end result of her crafting process. Incredulous swearing, and a few foot stomps were involved. At first blush, a more useless enchanted weapon would be hard to imagine. Then the idea struck. Slings had a long and storied history beyond their use by shepherds to ward off wolves, and one of their common uses was as siege weapons. A wall couldn’t run away from rapidly growing plants, nor could most defensible positions.
It had all been theoretical, but she had played around with the idea of balls of sticky mud with seeds and cuttings embedded. The sling not only augmented her Charm: Plant, it also conveyed her mana abundantly, and while she spun her missiles, she could commune with the plants therein.
The plants she now used to pull herself skyward, around the ledge of rock and soil that projected above the leg like some combination of turtle shell and caddisfly. She swung, dangling in the air for a moment, before she began to climb, urging the vines between her fingers to stay strong, to send their roots deep, thankful yet again for her small body that could be supported by the new growth.
Then, she was atop the great beast, knees trembling, exercising her stiff, sappy hands, looking across the moonlit plains at columns of steam and smoke as far as her eyes could see.
Here’s hoping it hasn’t learned to roll over.
She couldn’t help but think of Nandi’s paradox of abundance. The most dangerous enemies of humanity through history had been the flea, the mosquito, and the parasites, smaller still, that they carried. Their small size was their greatest superpower.
All around her plants grew, feeding from the abundant earth mana, and after she made her way to the center of the beast’s back, she pulled forth more, reaching into the forest of her Trial space to grab handfuls of acorns and other nuts. Feed your roots, she thought to them, drive them downward, split and rend the very stones.
They were happy to oblige, for though the quality of the earth beneath them was poor in substance, it was rich in mana. She guided them through the acid soil and stinking sulfur deposits, helping them to adapt to the harsh environment. Beneath her the great beast heaved its mass over the landscape, turning as it sought its prey. It could crush cities, destroy armies, she imagined, but it could not find the flea on its back.
All was well for several minutes, perhaps the time necessary for the first of her vines to drape across the beast’s vision, or for the first questing roots to penetrate the outer layer of its great earthen shell. The first sign that the nature of the encounter had changed was an abrupt stillness, the heaving, rolling motion of lumbering movement beneath her stopped and settled. Lilijoy looked up from her verdant communion to see the beast’s great cragged head extending upward, its neck elongating, serpentine, with pallid, fleshy scales, stretching, pulling forth from the mass it carried on its back, swiveling. Eyes the color of sulfur came into view, diamond pupils narrowing as they attempted to focus on this new arboreal ecosystem that had appeared on its back.
Oh dear.