I’d intended to sleep for a few hours at the most. I was tired, but I didn’t really want to be out around Bregg for too long, even with Sara watching. When I woke, I did so suddenly as always, going from slumber to wakefulness in an instant, and as my eyes shot open, I realized I’d been out a lot longer than that. The sun hung low in the southwestern sky, an orange disk blazing a few degrees above the horizon, casting long shadows along the plain below.
“How long was I out?” I asked Sara tiredly, sitting up slowly and blinking in the sudden brilliance. My body still ached, my head pounded, and my legs and back felt on the verge of cramping. Obviously, I wasn’t exactly healed just yet.
“About ten hours,” she replied promptly.
I looked over at the others. Both Aeld and Bregg still slept, resting on their blankets, although I felt certain the hunter wasn’t in the same spot he’d been when he first lay down.
“No, he woke up three times while you slept, John. Twice when an animal came near, and once to shift around to be between you and Aeld.”
I contained an amused snort. No matter what the man said, he obviously didn’t believe I wasn’t a threat to the two of them. I didn’t really care; honestly, in his shoes, I’d have thought the same. Although I probably would have removed that threat just to be certain, personally. Of course, Bregg was a hunter; I was a killer. Those were vastly different things.
“I take it neither of the animals got close enough to be a concern, then?” I asked Sara, pushing my feet out in front of me and leaning forward to stretch my calves and thighs. The muscles ached as I grabbed my toes and pulled myself forward, but they didn’t burn, so while they were damaged, it didn’t seem like they were torn.
“No. One was a bird of some sort that swooped overhead, then headed out over the plain. The other was an animal I didn’t recognize on the other side of the mountain. It went up to the peak, stopped above you, then ran the other way. I didn’t think either were worth disturbing your rest.”
“I appreciate it,” I told her, suppressing a groan as I pulled out tight muscles, easing them before they could cramp up on me.
“You’re mildly dehydrated right now, by the way. That’s part of why your muscles are cramping.”
I finished my stretches and rose to my feet, moving slowly to keep from twisting or shifting in a way that might cause my sore muscles to slam tight again. I finished my stretching routine, then grabbed my waterskin and walked over to stare at the plain below.
In the lowering sunlight, the checkered plateau looked peaceful. Dark figures still moved on it, small shapes I doubted I’d be able to see if it hadn’t been for my enhanced vision, showing me that despite the lack of recognizable structures, the place was inhabited. A wide ribbon of pale brown wound southward, almost directly before me, one I hadn’t noticed when I was looking around before, and multiple shapes moved along it, some much larger and longer than others.
“That’s probably that Northern Road Bregg mentioned,” Sara suggested. “If those are wagons or carts, then it looks like the Menskallin have managed to domesticate some animals.”
“That’ll be nice,” I sighed. “The last couple worlds, everything wanted to kill us all the time. It’ll be good to see a simple cow—or maybe a dog. Think they have dogs here?”
“It’s possible,” she laughed. “Although probably not the way you think of them. It would track with my analysis of the world’s biology, though. Here, take a look.”
A very familiar screen flashed in my vision, one that I was happy to examine.
Analysis Complete!
Doorworld: Sojnheim
MR: 61
TR: 34
BR: 59
Magic—Sojnheim is a world of Moderate Magic. Almost all intelligent and many sentient creatures of this world can use minor spells instinctively, and sapient creatures can use standard spells with either talent or training. Major spells should be uncommon but not overly rare, and Greater spells are possible for very talented casters or large numbers of normal casters.
All magic in Sojnheim is spirit-based, channeling spiritual energy and turning it into magical effects. There are two major methods of doing so, each unique to one of the major sapient races in the world, and each seems unable or unwilling to use the other’s methods. Both involve binding spirits into a vessel, then tapping the bound spirit for power. In Anduruk, the arts of the Menskallin, that vessel is the caster’s body, and they draw on that power constantly to empower themselves and gain special abilities they might not otherwise possess. In Henguki, the craft of the Oikithikiim, the vessel is a prepared gem or crystal, and the energy seems to be used to power a form of technology that otherwise should be impossible in this world.
Tech—Sojnheim is a moderate to low-tech world. Simple metallurgy is possible, but more advanced metallurgical creations such as steel are impossible. Simple and complex machines function, but powered machines more complex than a wind-driven sail do not. Chemical combustion does not work. The Oikithikiim seem to have found a way around these limitations, though, using the power of their magical arts to empower devices the same way more technologically advanced races might use combustion or electricity.
Biology—Sojnheim is a biologically diverse world. Evolution occurs rapidly, aided by magical and spiritual forces, and multiple intelligent species have arisen on this world. Evolution has taken at least two distinct paths: one quadrupedal and one hexapedal. Others may be possible as well, and given time, other sapient races are very likely to arise from the native fauna.
“You finished your analysis?” I asked a bit inanely. Obviously, she had. “When?”
“Several days ago. I didn’t show you because at the time, I didn’t think you’d want to see it. You were a little preoccupied, after all.”
“Yeah, I was,” I snorted. “With wondering if killing Bregg would have given me a chance to rest.” I read the descriptions a bit, nodding as I absorbed each of them. “Okay, this all seems pretty clear. No steel, gunpowder, or powered machines. Does that include things like windmills and waterwheels?”
“It does, yes. The spiritual energies in wind and water would interfere with those to the point of uselessness. You might see machines powered by living creatures—someone could haul a pulley, or an animal could pull a wheeled vehicle—but nothing powered by natural forces like heat, wind, or water.” She grimaced. “Well, except for the Oikithikiim, that is. It seems they’ve figured out a way to do it, judging from their weapons.”
“Yeah, those were a lot like firearms—or air rifles. Think they’re using a wind spirit to propel it?”
“Likely, although you could ask Kadonsel and see if she knows. She was the one maintaining them, after all.”
“So, they could probably create a windmill—or even an engine,” I suggested.
“A windmill, yes; an engine, probably not. It’s too complex. Spiritual energy isn’t the same as the forces released by combustion or electromagnetism. It’s far more chaotic, and anything you’re pushing with it could have a spirit of its own that interferes. Spirit-driven machines are likely to be underpowered and inefficient compared to higher-tech analogues. Again, though, you could probably get more information from the ojain.”
“I will, I promise,” I chuckled. “By the way, what’s this about hexapedal animals?”
“The Oikithikiim, John.”
The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“They only have four legs, Sara…” I stopped and took a deep breath. “Plus two arms. Duh. Got it. Okay, so the Oikithikiim and Menskallin are on different evolutionary trees?”
“They almost have to be, John. In Puraschim, the biology rating was high enough for species to diverge wildly from one generation to the next, gaining totally new forms, but not here. For the Oikithikiim to have six limbs and the Menskallin four, they had to have come from very different evolutionary backgrounds and might be completely biologically unrelated.”
“Meaning what?”
“Not much, really. Only that they might be utterly biologically incompatible. Typically, there’s some biological compatibility within different closely related species, even if there isn’t reproductive compatibility, but the Menskallin and Oikithikiim might have totally divergent systems, biology, and biochemistries.”
“Okay, so I won’t try to implant an Oikie kidney in a Menskie,” I chuckled.
“Assuming they have them, yes, that might be a very bad idea,” she laughed. “However, the point is that evolution in this world occurs fairly rapidly, meaning a species placed in a domestic situation will quickly evolve to adapt to that situation over several generations. If the Menskallin captured numerous ishvarn pups and raised and trained them to work for them, their descendants would quickly adapt to better fill that function.”
“So, domesticated animals might be common here, then?”
“They might, although the presence of close spirits might disrupt things a bit. You’ve seen that close spirits can possess animals, and that those are a lot more powerful than the natural ones. The people in this world might not keep predatory or potentially dangerous animals around to make sure they don’t get possessed and start killing people.”
“Good point.”
I closed the screen after reading it carefully. Honestly, the magic bit was what interested me the most. I knew that the Oikies did magic differently from the Menskies—and that each seemed to consider the other’s way an “abomination”—but it looked like Sara had worked out some of the differences a little more exactly. What I didn’t know was if they were actually unable to perform one another’s magic, or if they simply chose not to. Fortunately, I had a resource to ask.
“Hey, Kadonsel,” I thought silently. “I have a question for you about your—about Henguki.”
“Yes?” the spirit asked a little warily.
“I saw how your soldiers used it to power their weapons back on the beach. How does that work?”
“You’re asking me for the secrets of our weaponry?” she said incredulously. “What, so you can arm the savages with them?”
“Not in the slightest. It wouldn’t work, anyway. First, knowing how those weapons work isn’t the same as being able to reproduce all the parts of one. Second, none of the Menskallin would touch them. They think they’re unclean and profane.”
She snorted. “They’re purer than their arts are,” she said bitterly, then sighed. “Fine. I told you that in Henguki, we bargain with spirits, granting them a perfect vessel in return for being able to tap their energies, right? We can also cause them to reach out from that vessel and affect the world around them.”
“So, there’s a tiny wind spirit attached to each of those weapons?”
“Not the tulli themselves, no. Each has a small spirit orb attached to it, and a wind spirit inhabits that orb. It does the actual work of propelling the darts.”
“And the larger weapons have more powerful spirits,” I said thoughtfully. “What about your clothing? I noticed that it had spirit energy in it, too.”
“The same. There are tiny spirit orbs woven into the fabric, ones with fire and earth spirits in them to make the clothing warm and durable. The soldiers’ tunics had stronger earth spirits to give them greater protection.” She fell silent for a moment. “Obviously, it wasn’t enough.”
I didn’t bother to comment on that. She was right; the defenses weren’t enough to hold out the Menskie spears. That made me think that they weren’t designed for that, though. They probably would have been a lot better at deflecting those darts. I wondered absently if maybe the Oikies spent more time fighting one another than the Menskies, but I filed that thought away for another time.
“What about transportation?” I asked. “Do you use spirit orbs for that?”
“There were a lot of them in the Matleena,” she said. “The ship the savages burned. They helped keep out water, thaw ice, protect the hull, and kept wind in the sails.”
“What about on land.”
“It’s been tried, but it never works. The amount of wind needed to push a sailing landship is beyond what spirit orbs can provide, and trying to carry one with earth spirits is even harder. Heboni are easier and more reliable transportation.”
“What are those?”
“Animals, taller than the savages, strong, and mild-tempered. I think the savages use them, as well, but I don’t know what they call them.”
“I know that the Menskallin think that there’s something wrong with Henguki,” I noted. “Do you think that’s because they can’t use it?”
“Of course, they can use it!” she said irritably. “Some of the Redeemed Elders use Henguki frequently!”
“Some?” I asked quickly. “Not all?”
“Well, no, not all. In fact, most choose not to utilize our technologies if they can avoid it. They say that touching anything with a spirit orb makes them uncomfortable, but that’s probably just something they learned from stories their forebears handed down.”
“What about their arts? This Anduruk? Do any of your people practice it?”
“You mean, tainting the pure, immortal ones with our mortal filth in an effort to gain more power?” she asked bitterly. “You want to know if my people do that?”
“Not all of them, but it seems like some of them would,” I noted. “As an experiment, if nothing else. No one’s ever tried to attach a spirit to a soldier to make them stronger, or to a worker to see if they can perform longer?”
She fell silent for a few seconds, and when she spoke again, her voice sounded troubled. “I have heard—stories of that sort of thing,” she admitted. “Just tales, mind you, but they all say that if one of the people tries to take a spirit into themselves, they die swiftly and in agony—and the stories say that their spirits are lost rather than traveling to the Great Spirits above.”
“The Great Spirits?”
“Yes, those who came before all and exist outside of time, in the Upolko. The ones who created everything, from the tiniest grain of sand to the entirety of the sky. You don’t know of them?” Her voice sounded confused, and I hastened to reassure her.
“We probably just call them something different,” I said. “So, you said that when you die, your spirit goes to join them?”
“Yes. They created us to live a mortal life, to experience time and growth and death, and when we die, we give those experiences to them. That’s the whole reason the Great Spirits created this world: to learn what a mortal existence is.”
I didn’t know that I’d be all that reassured believing in creator spirits that made me as a science experiment, but then, I suppose it was as good a story as one about a creator that made people deliberately flawed, offered them obvious temptations, then punished them for falling for those. I wasn’t about to argue comparative theology with a disembodied spirit in a world that probably existed in a totally separate universe from mine. For all I knew, she was right, and that was exactly how and why this universe got made—and it really didn’t affect me in any way.
The gist was that it seemed that Menskies could do Oikie magic if they wanted, but it didn’t seem to agree with them. Maybe that was a cultural thing like the ojain said, but it felt more likely that it was a biological difference. After all, if it were cultural, the Oikies could have educated it out of their ‘elders’ over a few generations. On the other hand, it sounded like Oikies simply couldn’t do Menskie magic without a really adverse reaction.
“Like putting a Menskie kidney in an Oikie,” I thought with a chuckle.
“More like a heart,” Sara agreed with a laugh. “Obviously, each species’ magic is integrated into their biology to some extent—or it rose naturally as a result of their biology.”
“It probably doesn’t matter why it’s that way, Sara. What matters is that the Menskallin could have adopted Oikie technology if they really wanted and dealt with the discomfort. They didn’t, though, which means their beliefs probably outweigh the benefits advanced technology would give them.”
“I’m not sure why that’s important, John.”
“It matters because zealots can be unpredictable and extreme in their responses, and you can’t always tell what might set them off. We might need to keep in mind that no matter how calm and reasonable someone like Aeld appears, deep down, he could be an unstable fanatic—in fact, we could be walking into an entire nation of them.
“And to make things worse, that nation is locked in a war with one that seems just as fanatical. Religious wars can get particularly nasty—at least, they did on Earth. People will do and have done truly horrific things in the name of religious fervor. Want to kill all the children in an enemy city? Want to poison their main water supply? Want to lock up their noncombatants and burn down a building with them inside? It’s all fine, as long as it’s done in the name of faith.”
I stared out at the plain below us. “In our last few worlds, Sara, we were dealing with people who were relatively reasonable,” I noted quietly. “The School of Earthly Fires just wanted a competitive advantage over the other schools. Ilinca thought she was saving everyone. Kamath wanted to become an emperor. The steps they took to achieve those goals might have been extreme and badly flawed, but they made sense, even to an outsider. That made it easier to guess what they were doing—and to stop it.
“Here, that might not be the case. Whatever the Oikies are doing could be fueled by religious fervor, and it might make no more sense than Kadonsel’s story about the spirits creating this world as a science experiment. That might make it much harder to guess what they intend—and even harder to stop them from doing it.”
“Why do you think that?” the AI asked.
“Because while what Ilinca was doing made sense to her, everyone else was opposed to it. Same with Kamath; if the Marshals had really known what he was doing in the Uttar Forest, they would have sent an army to stop him. If the Oikies are doing something that their religion tells them to, though…”
“Then all of their people might support it,” she finished quietly. “You might have to stop an entire nation, not just a person or organization.”
“Exactly. And my only possible allies…” I glanced back at the two slumbering figures and grimaced. “Belong to an entire species that seems to have trust issues and dislikes strangers.” I looked back out at the plateau, my heart heavy in my chest. “I have a feeling, Sara, that no matter what I decide, we might be dealing with all of this alone this time—and I don’t know that the two of us are going to be enough.”