Chapter 3 - Explosions and Wine!
Palinus charged around the corner. As he rounded the corner he could see Bruchts and Rufian just ahead, they had stopped and watched him wide eyed as he came into view.
“RUN, he’s after us!”
The boys started running again as Palinus ran past.
“Why is he bothering?” Rufian called out.
Palinus grinned over his shoulder and showed him the box.
“You are a legend!” Rufian praised Palinus and visibly perked up as they ran.
Over their shoulder they could see the guard following. The man \was bigger than the boys and looked to be in good shape. If they ran in a straight line the boys would be in trouble.
They bolted down the backways hopping from side to side of the sewerage channel and skidding around turns at the last moment to throw the guard off. The guardsman was wearing better footwear for this sort of pursuit with his heavy covered sandals but didn’t seem comfortable running on the slippery footing as he slowed at each turn giving ground to the boys.
As their flight took them around the corner leading to the road, Palinus quickly considered their options. If they climbed the steps up onto the road the guard might catch them or get help. They would stand out like sore thumbs as they were all conspicuously dirty.
“This way!” He yelled as he ran past the steps and ducked under the road leading the boys into the sewerage channel and deeper into the backways. The others followed as they retraced Palinus’s route this morning. With the excitement of the box and being chased they made quick progress under the road and around the corner.
A few turns later Palinus slowed as he confirmed they had lost the guard at the road and they stopped to catch their breath.
“Let’s have a look!” Rufian gasped not waiting to catch his breath.
Palinus passed the box to Rufian who set it down and wiped muck off the latch as he tried to open the box.
“Why are you still carrying that?” Palinus laughed as he noticed Bruchts was still carrying the iron poker he had picked up from the scrap pile.
“It’s good iron. It’ll be a good gift for my mother,” Bruchts replied earnestly.
The reply stopped Palinus's laughter and focused on Rufian opening the box. He felt a pang of jealousy for Bruchts to have that sort of relationship with a parent. Palinus saw his mother regularly, but the rules of the Vestral service meant they weren’t close.
As they watched Rufian gave up on the latch and was about to try to smash the box. Bruchts managed to grab it as his impatient friend lifted it above his head to bash it on the ground.
The big blonde teenager gently sat the box down and with the end of his poker levered the latch open.
Inside the box were twelve wands in individual compartments. Made of a light wood they were a foot long and were tapered to a hollow point at the top and about the width of a thumb at the bottom. Each of the boys grabbed one at random and waved them around. Cheering and pretending to shoot their wands at each other.
As they settled down they started trying in earnest to use the wands and set up targets using the rubbish in the area.
“How do you make them shoot?” Palinus asked.
“I don’t know,” Rufian admitted.
They tried different gestures and even commanded the wands to shoot but nothing seemed to work.
“No gem,” Bruchts suddenly said.
The stoneman teenager had been inspecting the wand in his hand and showed the other boys a gap at the bottom of the wand where there was a slot for a clearly missing component. Looking in the wands in their hands they both noticed the same absence.
“Bloody inferno!” Rufian yelled in frustration. “They’re supposed to be too lazy to bother taking these out.”
He threw the wand down and stomped over to one of their targets punching an unfortunate wooden box to pieces.
With more patience and lingering hope Palinus and Bruchts went through the box of wands and started inspecting each of them. None had anything in the slot at the bottom of the wand.
“They are called calculii not gems if they have attuned essentia,” Palinus told Bruchts.
“Hmm, there’s no difference in my language.” Bruchts replied.
“You’re right though. Without a calculii in the slot to draw essentia, these are just hollow sticks.” Palinus said as he gave up checking all of the wands.
Carefully Bruchts held each of the wands up to the light and looked down their hollow interior, he gave a start as he found something. Immediately he showed Palinus that one of the wands had a piece of calculii still left within the chamber of the wand. With a hopefuly expression he stood to test the wand.
The wand looked small in Bruchts big hand as he stood with his arm outstretched. Gently he flicked the wand towards a stack of rubble. There was a flash at the base of his hand and a popping noise, but nothing happened.
As Bruchts flicked the wand for the second time the wand again flashed and this time there was a high pitched pop and a whistle. With a short delay the wand spat out a tiny bolt of red fire that streaked towards the rock pile. The bolt flew lethargically as if travelling through water and fell short hitting the mud with a thwack that sounded like someone had punched the mud.
“Woo”
“Yeah” The boys were cheering and jumped up and down together.
“My go!” Shouted Rufian.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
With an inscrutable expression Bruchts looked at his firend and instead handed the wand to Palinus.
“Hmph fine, I’ve got next,” Rufian sulked.
With reverence Palinus looked down at the wand in his hand. Now that he held the wand properly he could feel a spark of warmth and as he stroked it he could feel it tug at something inside of him. They had never had practical training in using their essentia, but like all Erulean’s he had channelled essentia to honour the hearth when he went to the temple. The tug felt similar, he just had to let the wand connect to his essentia.
“Stand back,” he told the other boys. Rufian just rolled his eyes but Bruchts nodded earnestly and took a step back with a grin.
He picked a target, an old ceramic pot that the boys had balanced on a piece of wood sticking out of the mud. He stretched out his arm, pointing the wand at the target and flicked it, imitating Brucht’s movement before.
As the wand came back down towards the target he instinctively let the tug take essentia from his hand which released a twinge down his arm from his chest. It instantly felt right.
The flash from the bottom of his hand was visibly red compared to the whiter flash of Brucht’s. The sound a deeper pop with an instant whistle as the bolt shot out of the wand streaking towards the target. The bolt visibly spun and traced a tight loop leaving a helix shaped afterimage.
It struck the target with a flash and a thump breaking the pot to pieces and knocking over the propped up wood. The boys ran over to the destroyed target cheering. Pieces of pottery were scattered and the area around the target lay smouldering. The boys picked up the bits and examined the impact. Roughly reconstructing the pot they could see a circular chunk the width of two knuckles gouged out where the bolt struck. A few metres around the impact site was singed by the explosion.
“My turn!” Rufian snatched the wand out of Palinus’s hand and ran back to where he had been standing, “You’d better step back.”
He barely waited for Bruchts and Palinus to scramble behind him before he flourished the wand at some stacked chunks of rock. There was a flash of light and a fizzling pop that Palinus realised indicated the shot had failed.
With a put out expression Rufian immediately looked accusingly down the chamber of the wand making a noise of irritation. He wiped his hands on a less grubby bit of his tunic and took a stance to shoot the wand again. It whiffed again with a flash and a pop and the teenager glared at the other boys, daring them to laugh at him.
For his third attempt Rufian slowed down and looked uncharacteristically serious as he focused on the wand. He brought his other hand up to the wand and stood with a strong stance. This time he didn’t flick or move the wand and managed to trigger the flash of the wand discharging.
The wand went off with a pop and a whistle.
With a whoop of triumph Rufian ran over to the pile of rocks. The boys inspected the damage and comparing it to the target Palinus had hit. The area of Rufian's explosion was bigger and it had made more noise than Palinus’s shot.
“See how big that was!” Rufian crowed as he pointed to the rocks.
“But there's barely any impact damage,” Palinus countered, “and the burnt bits don’t look as hot.”
Rufian blew a raspberry back at him.
“Let’s see you do better then.”
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The boys took turns with the wand as the afternoon wore on. They ranged around the backways to find stuff to use as targets and gradually figured out how the wand worked, starting to get more accurate and pick their target better. They had to move a few times as surly home and business owners chased them away from their property.
As they mucked around with the wand Palinus went and grabbed the amphora he had found earlier. There was some leftover wine in some of the vessels and the boys drank the dregs even though it tasted off then used the pottery containers for targets.
Feeling pretty proud of himself Palinus only failed his shot twice, it seemed like Rufian would whiff about a third of his shots but Bruchts had the worst run of it. No matter what he tried he couldn’t get the wand to shoot faster bolts and it wouldn't work at all in more than half of his shots.
The good natured Bruchts wasn’t too bothered by the failure; instead egging on Rufian and Palinus who were being competitive and at this point a little bit tipsy. Rufian bragged that his bolts were bigger with more fire splash. Palinus argued back that he rarely whiffed and that his shots hit harder and created more intense fire.
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It took nearly two hours and the wanton destruction of countless pieces of rubbish before Rufian accepted that Palinus was more effective with the wand.
“It is just better attuned to you,” Rufian complained. “If we had a better wand I could beat you.”
“You are both better than me with hand to hand weapons or unarmed.” Palinus tried to mollify the sulking Rufian. He almost regretted challenging the other boy's fragile ego. Palinus had enjoyed the afternoon, hanging out with the boys had helped him forget his worries and with hours before nightfall he decided to surprise them.
“Hey you two. I found something this morning that you might be interested in seeing.” Palinus said.
“We should probably get back to the workshop.” Rufian replied.
“You’ll want to see this.” Palinus sensed he was losing the other boy's attention. He leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “I found a rift seed this morning.”
“Whoa,” Rufian said excitedly. “Show us!”
Scampering off excitedly Palinus led them through the backways. He pulled out the map he had made this morning to double check the way, he knew they were close but were coming from a different direction. They walked for a bit, listening to Rufian talking excitedly about rifts and shortly they came to the alley. From around the corner there was a visible glow of essentia and as soon as they saw it Rufian shot off in a run.
“Careful! It’s dangerous!” Palinus tried to caution Rufian but the boy just laughed and jogged around the corner. As they followed around the corner they found him stopped in his tracks and looking on in awe.
“Look at that!”
The rift seed, barely the size of a watermelon when Palinus left it earlier, was now massive. Its tendrils stretched to either side of the alley as they grasped the buildings. In the middle of the thick waving tendrils was a swirling maelstrom of light raging around a circular aperture of prismatic colours. Juxtaposing the energy of the rift in the heart of the maelstrom there was a calm image of a room full of pillars lit with a red glow.
This was no longer a seed. This was a mature rift.
“Let’s go!” Rufian waved the other two on and started walking towards the rift.
“What? No” Palinus refused.
“Wait!” Bruchts begged Rufian to stop at the same time.
“Why so scared? It’s a rift! This is a huge opportunity for us!” Rufian tried to encourage the other boys. “People go into these all the time and come out with amazing calculii or weapons.”
“It’s not safe, you could die!” Palinus tried to talk him down.
“Have you ever known anyone to die in a rift? My Uncle Ares dives all the time, he says only idiots get killed.”
“Ares is crazy Rufi…” Brucht’s counter argument seemed to deflate Rufian for a moment.
“Yeah, bad example… But random people go into rifts all the time. It’s called shepherding,” Rufian wasn’t giving up. “All you do is hang around and you pick up essentia off the ground. You could be powerful! …you could fight Amnus.”
Rufian said the last line softly, looking straight at Palinus with a sympathetic expression. It felt like a strike to the stomach with the mention of Nutrator Amnus. Despite his eagerness Rufian must have detected that that line of argument hadn’t hit the mark as he quickly pivoted.
“I am going in, trust me. It will be ok, you will be safe. The Nexus will just revive you if you get into trouble.” Rufian sounded confident and with a moment of thought he passed the wand to Palinus. “Here, you are better with this. I am relying on you two to back me up.”
“I need to get back to the wool,” Palinus said limply, he realised there was no stopping Rufian. “At least before dark.”
“We’ll be back soon, don’t worry!”
Rufian marched towards the rift alone. As he approached he raised his hand and a tendril of light reached back.