Lucy and James hadn’t come out of the patch of desert they had disappeared into for over a day. James said something about a glade and he was very happy to see everyone then dragged Lucy into a shimmering haze and disappeared. They had both set their status to ‘Do not disturb’ on the interface.
Kyra, Teddy and Charlie accepted that they were going to be cloistered away a while. Teddy and Charlie did as much as they could on the project but there wasn’t as much Teddy could do without Lucy. He was receiving an education in artifice that others in the world would pay a small fortune for, the fourth-stage-crystal was a tricky material to work with, not worth the effort and expense for many crafters. He had started making his own tools to manipulate the material and they had met Charlie’s satisfaction. There was an immense satisfaction to working on the vehicle and learning the craft. The learning curve since coming to the new world had been intense and they had learnt a lot about magic and fighting, the academy annex had kept that curve going, only now that he was learning something different did Teddy realise they had been solidly learning about how to take monsters and people apart, he was finally learning how to put something together.
In the others absence Teddy and Kyra taught Charlie how to play blackjack with their earth cards. He was obsessed with the game and they wondered if this new world had casinos, if it did then Charlie had to stay as far away from them as he could.
They were mid game when Teddy’s errant brother and his wife came down the stairs. They looked surprised to see the massive pile of coins on the table in front of the adventurers and the small stack of fourth stage crystal in front of the craftsman.
“Hit me.” The short man said. Almost bouncing in his seat.
Kyra turned over a card, the two of hearts.
“Hit me!” His eyes going wide with excitement.
Kyra turned over the next card, the king of spades. Charlie thumped his cards down rocking back in his chair his hand on his face. They saw he had been holding a five of clubs and a six of hearts. Kyra smiled with relief, they all stood up and she pulled out a pocket mirror to take everything on the table.
“Uh, hi guys.” James said after clearing his throat, holding his wife’s hand like he was never going to let go. “Can we chat? This is a sit down with a cup of tea chat.”
They sat down around the low table and James talked them through what had happened to him. They were shocked and worried for him at how close to death he had come. Whilst he was talking about it they saw him taking strength from Lucy as she sat and leant against him.
“And that flash is what made it find me. It was always going to find me, I don’t know what my plan was at that point. It was hard trying to decide what to do next. Turns out it was a racial gift transfiguration. That’s the only reason I’m here.” He pulled it up on the group interface.
James Mitchell
Racial abilities (Outworlder)
Interface system
Looting ability
Language adaptation - including animals
Princess power - storage
Staff of the Everglades
Ability: [Staff of the Everglades]
Transfigured from [Outworlder] ability [One with Nature]
Place a staff that conjures an everglade around you.
Anyone that is not invited to the glade will not be able to perceive either it or you, subtle illusion magic will direct them around the glade.
Health and mana regeneration is increased in the glade.
The Staff of the Everglades is only available once per day.
“And thats where I hid from the monster. You know that instinctive feeling when you’re using a power? Well I could feel the monster’s attention coming round, I knew it wouldn’t work with it looking straight at me. The pressure of trying to use it before it unburied itself was terrifying.”
“The pressure like Crash Bandicoot trying to jump a pile of lava before the dinosaur runs him down.” Teddy said wisely nodding.
James gave him a small smile, not quite ready to smile completely but grateful his brother was trying to make him feel better.
They sat and talked for a while, they got through two pots of tea in the time it took for everything to be said about the nightmare run back. Just as they were washing out the few cups and pot the lights started to flash. They dimmed then strobed red angrily, they flashed once red then silver then back to red.
“What the?!” Teddy exclaimed, confused that this was the first time it had happened in the weeks they had been there.
“Not to worry, not to worry. I went an got the early warning back up after the big crash, one red flash is essence user, silver is, well, silver obviously.”
“How far out is it?”
“About halfway to Boko in radius, silver ranker travelling normal fast maybe an hour. If they have silver rank transport then any minute.”
“Any chance the early warning also came with any sort of defence?”
“Not to worry, any silver ranker coming out this way is after me, my works good enough I don’t attract that may enemies, cool your boots.” His hover chair floated up the stairs to the outside, as the others hadn’t been invited they stayed downstairs in the workshop.
Not long after the chair came back down the stairs accompanied by an older looking elf. They felt the politely restrained silver rank aura and wondered how old she must be to overcome the age defying beauty of silver rank.
“Mitchells this is Priestess Shaniva, Priestess this is James, Lucy, Kyra and Theodore. Does anyone want to tell me why there is a priestess of the healer here?”
[Ah, hadn’t actually planned this bit out if I’m honest.] Kyra put up on the interface, she was hoping that someone would have a good idea.
The priestess picked up on the blank faces of the Mitchell’s and interjected on their behalf.
“Well hello all. My god has sent me this way because he has seen that there is a rare case that will develop our understanding of advanced healing techniques, while not a part of his church Mrs Kyra Mitchell has a special place under the gaze of my gods watchful eye. He of course told me that they were here.”
“Eh, so you recken yer ‘ere for me?”
“You tell me Mr Efkycharkzshyn, have you ever seen a silver ranker that was in a position such as yours?”
“Can’t say I rightly have if I’m honest. You reckon you can do more than young Mrs Mitchell over there then?”
“Mrs Mitchell has been doing an admirable job and is having real results. However she has only been in this world a short while and her education is ever expanding. Part of why I am here is to guide her in your healing.”
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“All right then, save I’ve not really got a space for you yah see, gonna be a bit o’ a squeeze.”
“Well I’ve been meaning to ask you about that Charlie.” Kyra chipped in, I hesitate to ask as it’s your home and you said multiple times that simplicity is key to your thinking process but I can easily earth shape a few more rooms off this main hall? Saves us having to share in the middle like this, and get some privacy.”
“Aye, I can acquiesce to that I guess, ain’t got too much longer on the project but its no skin offn my nose if you and yours want to be more comfy.”
Lucy shuffled in her seat a little and squeezed James’ hand.
“We can make it simpler also, James and I were talking and we were going to spend some time together in the glade, its safe enough from anything our rank and most bronze rank threats, if anything else comes up then the warning system down here will go off and you can warn us?”
“So that was dimensional magic I felt upstairs then, beware, if I actively tried it would not have been hard for me to find and to break into your iron rank magic.” Shaniva said.
James and Lucy looked at each other, still holding hands. There was a tender moment and they all realised that for how much time they had spent together in this new world; no one having to go to work in different places or obligations of family or old friends, they had been struggling to find time for their significant others. The lack of privacy afforded to them with the interface, sharing lodgings, constant camping when everyone had highly sensitive senses. James and Lucy had found the glade to be a restful break from the rest of the world where they felt truly alone together. James backed up his wife.
“We understand, we’ll be just upstairs, the glade has a kind of sentience so if you come near it I will know and we’ll be out in moments.”
………
Teddy and Lucy were continuing their work. Unassisted they could create the large panels required for the superstructure of the vehicle. It was a mechanical rhythm of Teddy using his super speed and accuracy to beat the magic that Lucy was producing into the crystal. James sat nearby leant up against a sleeping Koda meditating. He blamed himself for not being more disciplined with himself in his meditation. Every good adventurer consolidated their experience by meditating in order to progress through ranks, for James however it was more than that, his Hibernation power allowed him to accrue stacking instances of Integrity when he meditated which increased his healing speed and mana accumulation, when he had run from the monster he had almost none in the bank, it was a mindset shift to now always make sure that he had the maximum available to him, he had got used to being able to choose his time for combat and had realised that this was a lazy mindset and combat could come at any moment.
Kyra was in Charlie’s quarters off the main hall with the priestess Shaniva. They had Charlie undress to his underwear and lie in an incredibly complicated ritual circle that Shaniva had drawn. As he lay there and she fed in a coin to activate it they saw what looked like a hologram raise out of his body and rest around a foot above him. From secondary school biology back in her world Kyra had seen the models of the human body that had been drawn on computer that were stripped down to the veins, arteries, bones and brain. This ritual reminded her of that, the ‘brain’ mass was somewhere in the middle and the veins and arteries were swirling mist-like branches rather than set smooth lines. The effect was vivid and healthy, the swirls moved from the mass in the centre as if it was a rather large heart and it radiated out. There was a stark contract to when the lines of mist got to Charlie’s legs. The thick mist branches just stopped, there were some tiny wisps tendrils that looked like they were trying to go where they should but they lacked the robust strength of the rest.
“What you are seeing is a representation of the magical matrix of the body. How much do you know about the process our bodies go through as we rank up and how they respond to injuries?”
“I looked into it a fair amount, I was interested from a point of view that my family and team here are all outworlders and we jumped the gun slightly in terms of the magical process through the ranks. My understanding is that at each major threshold in advancement our bodies become more magical and less… fleshy. Traditional circulation and organs become less important, the framework, which were seeing in front of us, is from the soul. Is that his soul we can see there?”
“No that is merely a representation made by the ritual to deduce whether or not it is damaged and in good health.”
“If the soul has health does that mean you can attack peoples souls?!”
“No…” She paused, cocking her head as if listening to something Kyra couldn’t hear. “This is not information we share with the majority of essence users, silver rank may start to get some inclination, not really at bronze rank and certainly not at iron rank.” She took a deep breath. “But my god has assured me that you are safe to know this information, a case that puts me in a position between my church and the adventure and magic societies. Soul attacks are amongst the most malevolent, abhorrent and heinous things you can do to a person. The soul is inviolable. Fact. It cannot be pierced by another, but they can hold it to siege and make it almost worse than death to force a person to give their very soul to make it stop. Most damage that we know to the soul comes from significant events. Tell me, do you have any scars on you?”
“Yes I have a scar on my leg here where I ran through a glass door as a child.” Kyra lifted the leg of her training Gi they all pretty much lived in when not out adventuring, she was surprised to see her leg completely unblemished. “How have I not noticed that not being there?”
Shaniva smiled “You are aware of the process for how outworlders re-constitute? Your soul travelled through the astral from your world to here, your body was annihilated in your world and you used magic from your entrance to this world to form a new body, how did it know to form the body the way you knew it?”
“I don’t know? Like the way your skin cells know to replace themselves from your DNA?”
Shaniva looked curious, taken off guard from her lesson by the information that she had never heard of.
“Never mind! This strays into territory we were warned of by Knowledge not to mess with.”
“You received a personal warning from the goddess Knowledge? We shall leave it then. But it sounds similar, your soul contains the blueprint for your body, in yours and your kin’s case this meant completely rebuilding a body, in most peoples cases it means that their souls know how to repair their bodies and magic allows it to happen.”
She motioned to the matrix above Charlie as she pressed hard on his hand, Charlie had been put to sleep by a powerful healing potion and didn’t react but the hologram effect did.
“You see the small swirl of activity?”
She took a small slim knife from her belt and punched it through the hand she had been prodding, this time Charlie’s eyes darted around behind his eyelids but he did not wake. Kyra moved to intervene if Shaniva went to stab the sleeping man again.
“Not to worry, it is a teaching point, look how the matrix is completely unblemished? His silver rank healing will make it as if it never happened, the damage is simply too small. It takes an incredibly significant event, a near death experience to truly mark the soul, which in turn creates a physical manifestation of the damage, a faulty construct from a faulty blueprint.”
“The explosion, cave in and subsequent trapping was enough to leave a scar on Charlie’s soul then?”
“Yes, the explosion sounds like it would cause significant damage to a silver ranker from my conversation with Mr Efkycharkzshyn, the cave in caused damage to his legs while his body was fighting the damage from the explosion, the amount of time he was trapped, magic starved and unconscious meant that his body went through a kind of triage and sacrifice the magic required to sustain the magical matrix that supported the most damaged part of his body; his legs, in order to save the whole.”
“And the magical matrix is governed by the blueprint from the soul?”
“Yes.”
“The soul that is inviolable.”
“Yes.”
“The inviolable soul that supports the matrix that supports the legs that we are trying to heal?”
“Oh I’m so glad you are a quick study.” Shaniva now had a small coy smile on her face.
“Well I’m assuming by your slightly smug confidence that there is a way to heal him without trying magical torture to get in his soul?”
The smile left Shaniva’s face at the idea of magical torture.
“Think of it as extensive rehabilitation, you have been going along the right lines to trying to heal him but there is some elements you are missing, we need to re-teach his soul to support his legs.”
“Gently coerce the soul rather than break in then.”
“Almost, but with some force.”
She took the knife and slashed it halfway through his foot from top to bottom. Charlie didn’t even stir.
“Now heal that Mrs Mitchell if you please.”
Kyra had already been prepared to launch a life bolt, it took several bolts to heal the foot, the knife was silver rank, being wielded by a silver ranker to do that much damage, her iron rank spells took quite a workout to repair the damage.
“By continually healing damage to the unsupported parts of Mr Efkycharkzshyn we will be re-teaching his soul that it needs to support those areas, they are still attached, biologically and magically supported, the framework just needs pulling down to cover them again. It will be sped up by conducting this whilst he is awake.”
“Like putting and amputee up against a mirror to treat phantom pain in the arm no longer attached.” Kyra stated.
Shaniva tilted her head in puzzlement. “What barbaric healing did you have in your world? Why wouldn’t you just re-attach the arm?”
Kyra raised an eyebrow, looking from Shaniva, to the knife still in her hand and to Charlie’s foot and back.
“Because we don’t have magic healing.”
Shaniva shut down the spell and for decency dressed Charlie. They put him on his bed and left the room to see the others. Some time later a groggy Charlie bumped his chair into the door as he made his way out. He found Shaniva wrestling with James, Teddy and Lucy still at the workbench and Kyra making huge holes in the wall of his underground home.
“It’s like no one respects the fact that I came all the way out to the desert an dug a cave to be by meself.”
“May I remind you Mr Efkycharkzshyn that your isolation is partly to blame for your current condition.” Shaniva called out, she had James in a headlock that he was trying to work his way out of, his face had gone bright red under his beard with the effort as she looked perfectly relaxed.
“Yeh well, all right. But call meh Charlie, I’m getting used to it.”