“So we just… stick it right here?” Sean asked, holding the flag they had brought along to signal to Saren and company that they were nearby and ready to pick up their promised goods. He looked around, not seeing anything resembling a city nearby. The incline they were on had another half-mile or so till its peak though, so it might be beyond there. Even so…
“You’re sure he can see it, or should we go a little closer? How much further is the city?”
“He should be able to see it here.” Gel affirmed, the slime’s eyeballs whirling around inside his chest. “This is the place, I’d bet my wobble on it. Two boulders leaning towards a desiccated tree. Four golden cacti. Eight shriveled half-silver bushes… can’t imagine that all comes together anywhere else.”
“Yeah, I was going to ask about that.” Sean said, stabbing the flag down into the packed earth. It took a few tries and some levering, but he soon had it in deep enough to be stable. The gelaton looked around when he was finished, taking in the sights of the oddly-specific plateau on the incline they had been wandering across for most of the night. “This place doesn’t look at all… ritualistic to you?”
Sean pointed his midnight hand at the cacti. “Those things are equidistant from both the tree and each other, and the first four of those–”
Sean pointed with the end of his black blade at the ‘shriveled’ bushes that were easily seven or eight feet in every direction. “-- are at the diagonal points between them… with the other half spaced about thirty paces behind those, all following the same line. Not to mention that thing in the center.”
The gelaton jabbed his left thumb at the twin boulders, each a towering 20-or-so feet in the air. They didn’t appear to be carved, but they were smooth as river-rock. Both were flat on the side facing the tree, whereas the outsides were rounded. In the center was a desiccated hardwood tree with faded golden leaves so dried up they were nearly see-through. Between that and the bushes, it looked like this plateau hadn’t seen so much as a whisper of rain in decades.
Oh, and the whole place gave off a faintly nauseating vibe. Sean didn’t feel actively ill standing here, not quite. It was more like when he had once discovered that the milk he had used for his cereal had expired… after eating the entire bowl. He wasn’t sick yet, but he would be soon.
The feeling had only grown stronger the nearer to the tree they had gotten, so Sean had made the executive decision to plant their flag at the outskirts of whatever-this-was.
“If Saren hadn’t already saved us himself, I would say he was leading us into a trap.” Sean pointed out, his instincts agreeing with every word. Mostly because he knew what this feeling was. He had felt revulsion like this before.
Life mana. Under the sands and in the plants. Probably why they haven’t died yet.
“All excellent points.” Gel readily agreed, finally stopping his whirling to stare at the desiccated tree and its leaves. “But before we leave, can we–”
“You want to taste one of those leaves, don’t you?”
“I do.”
“Alright.” Sean shook his head in amusement as he fought down the urge to go in any other direction but the one he was heading in. “One leaf, though. This is an experiment, not a feast.”
“One leaf.” Gel promised, before adding in a determined whisper. “From each branch.”
Sean’s jaw clattered with a chuckle that died out as they got within grabbing distance of the tree itself. His inner revulsion was in full swing now. It felt like he was standing next to a live wire, or a thrumming generator. Only there was no noise, and the thrumming he felt was more distant than he had expected. Like it was behind a wall, or–
Or a lock.
The thought caught him off guard, and for a second Sean wasn’t certain it had been his own. As he was busy processing that however, Gel’s crimson whip shot forward and snatched his first leaf, careful not to touch the tree itself.
To Sean’s complete surprise, nothing bad happened to the slime. His friend smacked imaginary lips for several long seconds as the leaf dissolved, before making a curious hmmmm sound and trying again with a leaf from a different branch.
“What’s up?” Sean asked, more than a little curious by now. There hadn’t been any prompt. “How’s it taste?”
“It doesn’t taste like anything.” Gel said, sounding equal parts confused and intrigued. “There’s nothing there mana-wise, either. It just sort of… crumbles. Do you think it’s–”
“-- a little anticlimactic?” Sean interjected, his skeletal nature fighting a war between trying to keep his revulsion down as his instincts told him in no uncertain terms to leave. “Are you really going to eat a leaf from all of those?”
“No, I just– hmm…” Gel scarfed down three more leaves before finally giving up, his crimson whip flicking out in exasperation. Like he was trying to flick something out of his non-existent mouth. “Blegh. I don’t– how does something not have a taste! Everything has a taste. But these leaves taste like nothing. I don’t get, and I don’t like it.”
“All done?”
“Yeah.” Gel sounded disappointed, and Sean couldn’t help but sympathize. They had both been expecting more from such a clearly unique plant, particularly given its surroundings.
Then again, maybe it’s just a tree?
Sean doubted that, and he was just about to give up on this whole thing when a possible solution struck him. They needed a leaf, so why not just take one? He glanced down at his black blade, a treasure from the inmortu they had slain. Using that felt unwise, so he switched it to his off hand and had Gel manifest a crimson dagger in his right as he took aim.
“Ahem.” Gel made a firm throat-clearing sound, stopping Sean short. “Far be it from me to dissuade you from getting me what I want, but a thought just occurred to me: if you’re right and this is somewhere that Gold Spire cares about… we probably shouldn’t chop their sacred tree to pieces. At least, not before they drop off all the meat and stuff they promised us. Then you can do whatever you want to it.”
Sean would have blinked if he could have.
“That… is an incredibly fair point.” Sean replied, lowering his arm and taking a step back from the tree. He shook his head. Why hadn’t he thought of that? He hadn’t even questioned carving up the tree. “You’re right, let’s leave it alone for now. I’m not sure how we would even carry something that fragile around without breaking it. Let alone why we would need it… outside of ingredient experimentation.”
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
“It had no taste.” Gel repeated slowly, still a hint offended by that fact. “There’s no experimentation necessary here, in my opinion.”
Nodding and heading back over to the flag, a decision his instincts seemed wholly in favor of, Sean glanced up the incline.
“Is Dervash on the other side of that?”
“I think so. Want to check it out?” Gel sounded eager, and since Sean figured they had nothing better to do than wait around right now, he might as well see his first-ever full-sized city from another world. The gelaton began heading in that direction, asking a few questions as he went.
“How long do you think it’ll take Saren to notice we’re out here?”
“He said he would check every evening, so we probably missed him tonight. So… at least another day?” Gel guessed. “That’s not too bad.”
“Nah, not after that three-week hike you took me on to get here.” Sean joked. “You didn’t tell me how far out this place really was before we left, I would’ve asked Auntie Ta for some more of her melons.”
“Hey, I’m working off of the fragmented memories of giants, alright? They’re much bigger than we are, and they don’t exactly care about ‘time’ like we do. So they cover more ground faster and only a handful of them ever bothered to remember what day it was.”
“I’m not complaining.” Sean said, raising his hand placatingly. “We’ve still got plenty of cooked food on hand right now thanks to that nermite den we found yesterday, and with the ridiculous amount of cactus-things running around out here? Another day is nothing.”
Prior to approaching the incline, which extended for dozens of miles in either direction like a small mountain ridge, the pair of them had decided to find somewhere they could rest nearby that wasn’t the top of a sand dune. Not that Gel was big on ‘resting’, and honestly neither was Sean, but they did need somewhere to observe the drop site just in case things went south or something out here tried to muscle in on their meal.
They pair had stumbled upon a shallow den of nermites, one that had clearly been dug into the side of a nearby dune. At least a dozen of the creatures had been living in there, and more kept returning while Sean was cooking up their former companions. Unfortunately, none of the lot granted them experience anymore. Nor had just about anything else on their journey. Giant scorpions, cactus-things, and the odd camel… none posed any real ‘threat’, and thus hadn’t provided even a single point of experience.
A fact which was particularly grating as they were still waiting on their next level up and possible evolution to bring Sean back to full health. Just need to find something worth fighting. Maybe we can go on another hunt while we wait? If the city regularly clears out this area there’s probably no point, but who knows? Maybe we’ll get lucky.
By mutual agreement, both Sean and Gel had spent their node points on upping attributes each of them had neglected up to this point. They had a broad swathe of abilities between them, but continuing to focus on rather lopsided ‘builds’ had felt like a short-sighted way to go about things. Sean’s near-death health had been – and still was – a concern, but it had been weeks since they had fought anything capable of doing any damage to him. Since anything that could would probably be able to do more than the few points he had left, Sean had decided to hold off on upping his toughness any further.
Swift Bones
Description: Increases the speed at which one’s bones respond to direction, allowing for greater maneuverability with less effort.
Effect: Competency attribute increased by 1.
Mana Aspect: Death
Refined Control
Description: Refines the accuracy with which one can direct the movement of one’s skeletal framework by enforcing a logical flow of mana throughout the body.
Effect: Competency attribute increased by 1.
Mana Aspect: Death, Order
Neither of the upgrades had come with any real outward changes to his appearance, but Sean had noticed he had considerably improved his natural dexterity since. Which wasn’t surprising. His competency attribute had been a miserable two before. A fact which would have been embarrassing to admit, if his points in toughness hadn’t literally saved his life so many times already.
I really need to figure out what the baseline is around here. Sean had thought after spending the points. Is ‘5’ where everyone stops investing in their dump stats? Should anyone even have any dump stats, or is that something only morons do?
Unsure either way, the gelaton had simply chalked that up as another answer he would have to find in Dervash. He figured answers like that were probably in a library, if they could manage to find one.
Back in the present, the pair of them had gone silent in anticipation. When Sean reached the top of the incline, his jaw dropped open. Gel let out a low mental whistle of appreciation.
“You have to hand it to them.” The slime said, pushing Sean’s jaw back up for him with his whip. “The enlightened sure know how to build impressive stuff.”
“Are all cities like this?” Sean said, gesturing at the scene before them with wonder in his voice. “It’s huge!”
“No idea.” Gel said brightly. “But I can tell you that Dervash is considered a ‘small’ town, more of an outpost really. That’s what the villagers thought of it as anyway.”
“How is that small?” Sean couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “Those towers are touching the clouds!”
When Gel sent over the mental equivalent of a shrug, Sean stopped asking questions. Instead the gelaton simply stared out, marveling at his first real glimpse of the ‘enlightened’ world.
For a ‘small town’, Dervash took up a remarkable amount of real estate out here in the sands. The city itself seemed to be broken up into multiple sections, at least four in total that Sean could make out from here. A brick road wide enough to serve as both directions on a freeway stretched out from what looked to be the city’s main gate – a massive, cerulean affair that Sean guessed was easily fifty feet high. Light blue walls stretched out from the gate on either side, wrapping the city on three sides while dull red towers rose up behind them.
Those structures alone were impressive, especially compared to what Sean had seen of ‘local construction’ back at Dry Run, but they paled in comparison to the six literally sky-high buildings of shimmering blue that stretched into the clouds above. That wasn’t an exaggeration, either. Sean could see one of the few clouds in the night sky partially obscuring the tops of two of the six.
Apparently when these people decided to build ‘skyscrapers’, they were not fucking around. Sean thought, wondering just how in the world these people had managed it without steel beams or concrete. What are those even for?
It wouldn’t make sense to put all the time, money, and effort Sean knew had to have gone into those six cloud-piercing buildings just for housing, so whatever their purpose was– he knew it had to be important. As curious as he was about that however, there was another, more intriguing thing to note about the city.
“Dervash is a port town?” That fact had never come up, but there was no mistaking the body of dark water stretching out into the horizon from the only non-walled end of the city. “I thought you said they were working on setting up a shipping route through Dry Run, why would they need that if they can just use ships?”
“Because none of the ships that set out from there ever return.” Gel said, adding an ominous twist to his voice that was given additional weight by the distinct lack of any ships he could see from their vantage point. “Hard to trade goods if the goods never arrive.”
“Fair enough.” Sean said, his burning orbs roaming hungrily over Dervash once more. He had to get in there now. He thought he had been resolved before, but now… now the desire was real.
“Want to go look for those sewers?” The gelaton asked his friend suddenly. “You said we’ve got time, so… might as well explore, right?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Gel said happily, before pointing a crimson whip into the air before them and crying out his now-familiar charge.
“Onward!!”