“So, yeah,” I pointed at the mission screen we had brought up for Dorth to see. “Because you’re similar to Elma, the nine worlds she could go to are worlds you can visit too.”
Dorthaunzee nodded and scribbled something on the notepad she had brought.
“So, we have nine worlds, but we only have twelve missions available,” Svilran said. “That’s not to say these worlds are having little trouble. Missions have ranks, and to gain access to higher rank missions, we need to increase our own rank.”
“Oh. I missed that detail,” I said. “Svilran, what’s it looking like right now?”
“Right now, we can only take on Auxiliary Missions from Ranks F, E and D. Incidentally, we only have E and D Auxiliary Missions.”
“Noted. Anyway, Dorth, we’ve got a few here we think you could do.”
“Yeah! You would be great for any one that needs magic!” Svilran squealed—she could barely contain herself. “Just imagine it! One day, we’ll be able to send Dorthaunzee on her own Heroic Missions where she can go and heal people! Oh, Dorthaunzee—you would be a vision of grace and kindness for so many!’
Svilran giggled like a dope with her head in the clouds. Dorthaunzee and I shared a glance, but we both thought Svilran was adorable.
“Anyway, Dorthaunzee,” I said, “one of the missions needs a caster, and you could probably help with the monster-slaying... Are you good at making magic items?”
Dorthaunzee shrugged.
“Alright, good to know... Would be nice if we had more things to do... Want to learn how to drive the telescope?”
Dorthaunzee clapped with delight. I started showing her how to use the telescope while Svilran kept absentmindedly giggling to herself.
I glanced over the shoulder at her when I noticed Dorthaunzee was feeling perplexed.
“She’s having a weird day, Dorth.”
***
Hours later,
“Dorthaunzee, you found another one?” Svilran excitedly wrote down the calibration settings and bearings. “Okay, just keep it there for another few minutes. There are many dials I have to record here...”
“Can I peek again, Dorthaunzee?” I asked. Dorthaunzee let me look through the eyepiece, and I got to see the 23rd world she found for the day. “Oh wow,” I said, chuckling. “Hey, Svilran, this world has sky islands, but they’re floating in some kind of dark void! Wow, it looks so dreary!”
Dorthaunzee quickly bopped me on the head and wagged her finger at me.
“Oh, sorry. I’m sure they’re beautiful in their own way.”
Dorthaunzee was happy again, and so was I. As it turned out, Dorthaunzee was the type of person that tried to see the value in everything. It was an extremely charming trait.
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Svilran made a note on a whiteboard that we pulled out from the
“Okay, so Dorthaunzee has found 23 worlds. I’ve found 11, and you’ve found 4, Fainn.”
Dorthaunzee and I grinned at each other. “I’m just not as good at driving telescopes.”
“Honestly, even I’m shocked at how good Dorthaunzee is!” Svilran said.
“It’s too bad we haven’t found any missions or heroes.” I pressed the button that let us scan a world for a Hero. “Yup. Nothing.”
“Well, we can’t expect possible Heroes to be dying every single second. Still, we can check every day now.”
I sighed. “I wish we could look at the civilizations the worlds had, though.”
What I was referring to was one of the difficult aspects of using the telescope. When we found a world, changing the settings by even a smidgen would cause us to lose the world. The telescope just wasn’t... precise enough without a hero for the telescope to home in on. The dials—they let us jump from 1.0 to 2.0, for example. However, this was a case where we needed the precision to be able to go from 1.0 to 1.0007435, for example. There were over a dozen knobs and switches too, and they ALL needed that degree of precision. Not even Dorthaunzee’s unexpected talent could give us the precision we needed to really visually inspect a world.
Svilran and I hoped we would be able to get what we needed through upgrades. Thank goodness for Elma, though. She was really the only thing allowing us to actually inspect another world in detail, thanks to the telescope locking in on her.
“Oh, we should put a star next to our favorite worlds,” Svilran said. “I’ll go first! I liked this one, the world with all the mushrooms! They were just so colorful, and they all looked so bouncy!”
“I feel like you just picked a world with poison around every corner as your favorite,” I quipped.
“I didn’t! Since when does colorful mean poisonous?”
In my head, I dug up many examples from Earth. Wasn’t going to tell her, though. This would pay off eventually.
“Which one was your favorite, Fainn?”
“I really liked the the world with the beach and all the giant coral that stuck out of the water.”
Svilran and Dorthaunzee clapped. “Oh! That’s my second favorite!” Svilran said.
“Yeah. I grew up in the mountains, so I never really got to see the ocean myself.”
I had another reason for liking that world—it made me dream of lying on the sand with bikini-clad babes nearby. That wouldn’t be so bad, right? Even admiring from afar would be nice. I glanced at Dorth and figured I should go for it.
“It really makes me think I’d like to have a pool built here.”
Svilran cocked her head. “A pool?”
“Yeah. Imagine how much fun Heroes could have diving into a big pool and splashing around.” Svilran still looked a little pensive. “If we had a swimming pool, you could wear cute, frilly swimsuits and bring along colorful balls and floats.”
“Oh! You’re right!” Svilran sang. She opened up the Build Menu and pouted when she learned what I, myself, had learned an hour earlier. “There’s no pool!”
“Let’s hope we can unlock it later. We need recreation facilities, dammit.”
“I completely agreed.”
Dorthaunzee nodded too.
Bikini, wet t-shorts, and irreplaceable poolside memories—all that was standing between me and that was time. And the Hero Hub’s systems, I guess. Though, if it came down to it, I was willing to find a shovel and build it myself.
“Hey, Dorthaunzee,” I said. “Which one was your favorite?”
She held up the number ‘three’ with her fingers.
“Hmm... That was the one where it was raining light, right?”
She nodded thrice and happily swayed from side to side.
I looked at Svilran. “That one kind of had a mystical feel to it, didn’t it?”
“I certainly thought so.”
A sigh escaped my lips. “Well. I hope you’ll get the chance to explore those worlds someday, Dorthaunzee.”
Dorthaunzee cocked her head and pointed at me.
“No, Svilran and I can’t leave the Hub.”
“That’s right,” Svilran followed. “At least, we can’t do so right now. We’re unsure if we’ll ever have that capability.”
“Which is fine,” I said, cutting off that little tinge of sadness I felt from Dorthaunzee. “We’ve got our responsibilities here now.”
Reminding myself of my responsibilities, I glanced at the monitor.
“Hmm?” I shifted seats and peered closer. “Whoa, this looks dangerous!”
Dorthaunzee and Svilran quickly crowded around me.
On the screen was Elma and the party in the center of a giant revolving swarm of rune-inscribed bats.