…that is a consequence of choices that I have made. Because, to understand, you need experience. And if there is something that I regret…
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A moment of quiet, before Thor nodded and drew a large breath. “I have heard stories. I have seen… Seen some things. Not the nobles themselves, but–”
“The Priesthood,” Mia interrupted in a low voice.
“Yes,” Thor answered. “The priests. They are always there in the background, somehow growing old with the nobles. They keep talking about blessings and bloodlines. About their divine rituals. It was always about this pattern…”
“This will challenge them,” Mia said. She looked at them. “If… When people hear about this.”
“Do we really want to challenge the nobles?” Vic asked, looking around. “Do we… have to?”
Vic got to his feet. Pacing around, he continued. “It’s magic. Like... I can hide now, completely disappear. Pete can cut through anything, and Mia can heal.” He turned to Thor. “You can… probably do something cool, too.”
Eyes shifting from side to side, he continued, “That is power. There’s…” Vic swallowed, before continuing. “There must be more power out there. More skill crystals! And that thing with Level 0? That… that means there are more levels. And the attributes… We can get stronger, we just need to find out how. Do we really want to share that with anyone?With all that power, we can make a difference. We can… Do we really have to share this?”
Matt, the only person there without a strange, new power, thought of his sister and brothers as he whispered, “Yes. We have to. It is not a choice. It is not about what we want. We can help people.” An eagerness to help everyone in his village welled up inside him. Looking at Mia, then at Thor, he continued. “But yeah. The nobles will do everything they can to stop us. And the priests.”
Softly, Thor echoed his thoughts. “But we do not actually have a choice.”
“I agree,” Pete declared simply.
“Vic,” Mia said. “Anything to add?”
Vic sat back down, twirling the dagger in his hands. “I get it,” he said finally.
“We have something valuable here,” Matt said. “We can save people. Many people. But before we can share this discovery, we need to learn how to protect it.” Mia nodded for him to continue. “We need to do this slowly. Carefully. Deliberately, a few people at a time. People we trust. We ask them to join us here. This place is actually pretty defensible…” Matt looked around the room.
“Yes,” Pete nodded, mostly to himself. “It is. A single entrance, narrow, and we can control it. But… Still. They will come with their trained guards. Sword and steel and decades of training. One of them can take ten of us. Easily.”
“Perhaps yesterday, they could,” Vic said in a low voice, a mischievous grin on his face. His mood had bounced back. “But… but do you think they could stand in front of your Cleave, Pete? Just take the strike? I bet it will shatter any attempt to block the strike. Can they stop my dagger when I appear right behind them, out of nowhere?”
Matt watched Vic, thoughts spinning in his head. That. That was the start of something. An idea, a concept, a… dream. Of a place that was theirs, a community of people who did not succumb to the wasting disease. Eventually, it would grow–this was a dream that could get an unstoppable momentum. They needed to get stronger. Much stronger. Vic had the right idea. The dream was not enough on its own, and for the first time in his life, Matt was filled with an ambition to reach for power. Not for himself, but to protect his family. The feeling was strange, filling him with purpose and a will to act. They needed strength; they needed weapons; they needed to learn this new magic.
He looked up at the others and saw his own thoughts reflected in their expressions. Thoughtful, calculating, hoping. Eager.
“First, however,” Mia interrupted their musings, “we need to deal with the here and now. We have some basics. A kitchen; water; some basic tools and furniture. But there is so much more we need to make this place livable, starting with a steady supply of food.”
“We need to plan,” Matt began, meeting Mia’s eyes until she nodded back at him. He continued. “First… You say we need to make this place livable. Are we in agreement that we intend to stay here?” He looked around at the others.
Pete answered first, “I think we should. It’s either being out there, vulnerable to attack, or here, vulnerable to a siege. But it’s easier to defend.”
“Ok,” Matt said. “I agree with you–if not tomorrow, then one day, they will come for this place. We need to plan for a siege. In that case, we need supplies. As much as possible, before we do anything else. Then we need to make this place more defensible.”
Pete nodded. “We are five people. To keep watch, to hold the tunnel… I’d say we need at least twenty. Twenty people trained in combat.”
“And we need to get stronger,” Vic said. “We need to find out how we can get more skills. More levels, more attributes. And we need to learn to use them all, we need to train as a team.”
“Right,” Matt said. “There’s a target; twenty powerful warriors. With skills and training. That probably means another twenty non-warriors, as people won’t leave their families behind, and we need people to cook and clean and craft and do… Everything else a settlement needs. Whatever that is. So for now we need food and shelter for near fifty people. Until then, we have to keep this place a secret.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
Matt took a breath and looked around to nodding heads. Mia smiled and nodded for him to go on.
“After that, we need to consider how we want to grow this place.” His thoughts went to his sister and brothers. If he could save them from the wasting… “One thing is surviving, but what we have seen of this place so far cannot hold that many people for long before they go crazy. And one word to the wrong ear before we are ready… we fail. We know what the Duke is willing to do for some forests, farms and fields.” He took a breath. “I have a sister. Two brothers. I want them here.” Thor was about to speak, but he continued, “But they will have to wait. They are too far away. It is probably the same with you. You have family, friends. But they are weeks away. For now; the best way to help them is to grow stronger. To make this a place to live. To make it a place for everyone to escape to. A Sanctuary.”
Thor nodded at Matt and looked around their small circle. Matt wasn’t sure what had gotten into him; he had never intended to speak so much. That was more Mia’s thing. But this was a puzzle. This was something for him to solve, something to consider and understand, and he felt confident in the plan he had outlined. Again, he felt ambition stirring inside him. He was no longer just concerned with getting in the harvest before the wasting took him, or poking a hole in the stranger in front of him. Now he was planning for a future.
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Matt squinted up into the darkness of the cave above him.
“Guys, that’s very dark,” Pete said, giving words to what they were all thinking. Inside the large chamber, they had gotten so used to the light provided by the patterns in the ceilings that they had forgotten that their one and only torch had gone out a long time ago. Now they were assembled by the pile of rocks and debris where they had first fallen down into the mysterious underground complex, considering how they would get back out again.
“Indeed,” Thor said, shifting his head from left to right, trying to peer through the darkness. “We really need a torch, or some other kind of light.”
“Maybe…” Vic began. “I have an idea. Maybe we don’t. Let me try someth–” Suddenly Vic disappeared from view, before returning just a moment later. “Yep, it works. When I use the Hide skill, I can see better in the dark. Not perfectly, but well enough. I should be able to guide us through that.”
“You sure? We really don’t want to get lost up there.” Pete considered it for a moment. “Ok, we have to try.. Give me the rope.” Vic handed him a coil of thin rope that he had been carrying.
To get up the first part of the drop, they had shifted benches from the common room to create a small ramp that they could climb. They carefully scaled the makeshift stairs, and as soon as they got over the first ledge, the cave began to slope slowly upwards and they made steady progress on their hands and feet. It seemed so much steeper on the way down, Matt thought, when his hands finally reached the top of the slope. Grabbing on and pulling himself up, he turned to help the others.
Eventually, they all reached the top, standing in complete darkness and looking down at the faint glow of light from below. “Now,” Mia said, “Everyone, grab onto the rope and follow Vic. Vic, take the lead and speak up every time there is a split in the tunnel. I think I remember most of the way.”
Between one moment and the next; Vic vanished from sight, and Matt soon felt a tugging on the rope in his hand. He held on and followed it into the darkness, and quickly the soft glow from the hole behind them disappeared from view, leaving them in complete blackness.
Step by careful step, Vic led them out of the cave, sometimes flashing back into view for a few seconds as the skill ran out. Through the darkness, Matt could glimpse faint motions in the air as Vic absorbed shadowy threads from all around them.
Soon Matt could see light from up ahead, and they picked up the pace. A moment later they emerged onto a small ledge overlooking rocky ground that was sloping gently down towards the forest line. Matt remembered running up the slope–was it only this morning–chased by enemies, knowledge of certain death following him with every step. Now the sun was setting, and they looked out at a vast green forest shadowed by the enormous peaks at their back. Matt held his breath as he saw the threads of power streaming across the ground in front of him, reaching up into the air, weaving down the slope towards the treeline. They rose from rocks and grass, flowers and shadows; weaving intricate patterns as they met in the air, swirling together and flowing up into the sky. So they are not just in the cave. They are everywhere. Everything he could see connected to the threads.
“Now. How do we find a farm we haven’t burned to the ground?” Mia muttered as they started walking down..
After moving down the slope, the small group headed directly south along the foothills of the mountains, avoiding the villages and farmsteads to the east that they had visited with sword and spear only a few days before. Night was falling quickly, and they found a sheltered outcropping of rock where they made camp. Everyone was preoccupied with their own thoughts as they put down their bedrolls around the small campfire before eating their last supplies. More than just the physical challenges they had survived, the emotional rollercoaster that they had experienced cast a sombre mood on the small group as they huddled around the heat of the fire. Matt shifted and tried to get comfortable on the soft ground, staring into the flames.
This time yesterday, he was falling asleep after the most harrowing experience of his life. Closing his eyes, their faces flashed through his memory. Jasper, the old man on his spear, the pretty girl. His Mum. He felt a wave of emotion wash over him; mourning his friend, mourning the stranger, his enemy, and his mother. Their deaths were all so pointless. More so now, and he felt a deep regret at the thought of what could have been. He allowed himself a moment of fantasy, imagining himself leading them–all four–into the chamber with the magical ceiling. Smiling at them as he instructed them to lie down, to live. And something stirred within Matt. A curiosity tinged with anger; a strange sensation: What would the world look like, if people did not die after two decades? What will the world look like, when people have time? To live, to learn, to experience… His brain started working through some of the implications, and his mind sparked with a sudden realisation. So that’s how the nobles had swords and saddles to ride horses, cured leather tunics and quality clothing. They lived long enough to learn crafts, to pass it on to the next generation.
Another spike of anger. Another spike of curiosity. What else can we learn to do, to create, now that we have time?
“Mia,” he said. “Can you teach me to read?”
She smiled at him. “Of course. Vic and Pete, how about you?” She motioned for the men to join them. Vic was sceptical and muttered something Matt couldn’t hear, but Pete had a look of open curiosity.
“Is it difficult?” Pete asked as he got closer.
“No. But you need to concentrate. First,” she said, “you need to know that each symbol represents a sound that we make. This,” she pointed as she drew a shape in the dirt, “is the letter a.”