Tyters

Year 2, Mountains

            Chapter 1 Long Beach

                “Seriously Torger, we really need to at least check out the beach. I’m sure you and Graul could build a sturdy raft so we can float to Catalina and see what’s there.”

            Torger looked at all his friends that had been transported with him to Nuva. If the device at Catalina could take them all home, back to Earth, that would be wonderful. But could he really build some sort of canoe or sailboat that would get them there? He had never tried anything like that before.

            “What do you think Graul? Think we could make something to get us there?”

            “I’m sure we could, if the weather is nice and the sharks aren’t around.”

            After another minute of hesitation Torger agreed. “OK, we’ll leave in the morning. Fill up your water skins and pack some food. And don’t forget to bring your weapons.”

            They spent that evening saying good-bye to all the dwarves of Calico, although they were still at Lake Silverwood. There were hugs, tears, and pats on the back. The dwarves had come to really respect Torger over the last few months. They saw he was a visionary; his ideas of how to make the village run efficiently with everyone chipping in was refreshing to these hardy but mistreated dwarves. Torger instructed Stone Fist to finish the aqueduct as his top priority. Strong Arm was to smelt and purify the village silver ore as soon as the smithy was complete. Other dwarves were to finish making the dirt path to Small Hammer, now that the weather was cooler. They told him they saw the wisdom in his leadership, and if couldn’t get back home they would gladly welcome him back to being mayor. His heart swelled with joy at the accolades.

            Torger liked being in charge. He had a deep seeded desire for fair justice and equality. He had worked hard to walk through the village saying hi to all the dwarves and trying to learn their names. He remembered an incident from a couple months earlier. Once that summer one dwarf accused another of stealing his silver ore. Neither could prove their case so Torger didn’t make the defendant return anything, but he insisted all dwarves engrave everything they own. After that theft was no longer a problem; each dwarf realized it was up to them to protect their own property because Torger wouldn’t get involved without strong evidence. Torger also hated laziness. He made sure every dwarf had something productive to do. If they didn’t find a way of running their own business or working for the village, he told them they could clean out the latrines or gather firewood for cooking. Those kind of chores ensured every dwarf found something else to work on.

            True to their word, the elves had left them alone for the past five months, never coming near the dwarves, and never asking them to complete the ‘Kill 30 bears and kill 30 rocs’ quest.

            The Regulators left in the morning as soon as there was enough light to see. They followed the aqueduct towards Calico, and once they made it to the foothills they turned west toward Cajon Pass. A few coyotes came near but then thought better of it and turned away.

            Night was coming before they made it to the top of the pass. They were hoping to use the dwarves’ old tunnels at the top, but they weren’t going to make it that far. Torger and Arden had the magic backpacks, and the others had magic satchels, or man-purses. Torger and Arden removed a tent each, and the others took out food and water. The bread and berries were still fresh and they had a nice meal.

            That night on Graul’s watch a roc flew overhead and circled a few times then flew away. In the morning they found the dwarves had made the dirt path all the way over the hill and halfway down the other side before they went to the lake for the summer. That made their walking much easier and they covered more ground. Torger knew roads were essential to commerce, that’s why he pushed so hard to get them done.

            The next morning they came to Small Hammer. Baybil welcomed them and insisted they have lunch with him. When they were all seated he asked them, through Translate, to tell him what had been going on in Calico.

            Arden answered “We moved to the mountains for the summer. There is no water in Calico in the summer, so we set up a temporary village by a lake. But now we are going to the ocean. We hope to find a way to get back home.”

            Baybil said “Wait, not so fast. You moved the whole village away from the silver mine?”

            “Yes.”

            “And the dwarves went along with it?”

            “Reluctantly, but they didn’t have much choice. Move or die of thirst.”

            “Did you guard the mine?”

            Antic answered, since his main job was to oversee the mining. “No. There’s nothing other than the silver that’s there, there is nothing to sustain life. The crops were all dried up without water.”

            “But the razorlings could have returned and inhabited the mines again.”

            “The dwarves killed all the razorlings when they took it in the first place. Either the razorlings are dead or the dwarves will kill them again. They fight very well together as a team.”

            “Yes, I know. Most dwarves do. I’m sure they’ll be safe but I hope nothing worse moved in.”

            Antic had a little fear in his voice as he asked “Baybil, what is worse that could move in to an abandoned mine in the middle of a desert during the summer?”

            “Lots of things, like a specter. Trolls like mountains and goblins like swamps, so they shouldn’t be there, and billiks aren’t much of a threat, but mad vines and giant moles are.”

            Graul interjected “Remember we did see a troll about twenty miles from here, not in the mountains. But what are mad vines, and how big are giant moles?”

            Baybil answered “It is odd to see a troll in the desert, but that might be an isolated case. Maybe it was ostracized from its family. Mad vines are vines that grow on cave walls and are poisonous to touch. They move fast for a plant and try to strangle victims. Giant moles are about four feet tall and dig tunnels eating the roots of plants.”

            Antic was glad he was getting off this crazy planet. “I hope those dwarves don’t come back to find any of that, but if our plan works we won’t have to fight any of that crazy stuff.”

            Baybil answered “Perhaps life is more civil where you come from, but here we are constantly battling monsters with our axes and other tribes with our words. Speaking of, I take it there were no elves on that mountain. That’s good to know.”

            Jex joined the conversation. “Actually yes, there are elves there. They’re from the Pomo tribe but their village got separated during the terra forming last year. They’re trying to re-establish contact and move. We’re guessing they live four hundred miles from here in a place called Yosemite.”

            Baybil was flabbergasted. “The elves let dwarves share the same mountain! You’re screwing with me. That wouldn’t happen.”

            “It did happen. Why do dwarves and elves not get along?” she pressed. Jex didn’t like that neither side would explain the hostility to her.

            “I’m having a hard time believing they spent months on the same mountain, but I’ll tell you. It’s very simple. We have different religions. The elves think their ancestors came here from another planet thousands of years ago as prey for the tyters. They beat the tyters, then populated Nuva. They worship their own cunning and intellect, and always thirst for more magic spells. We dwarves know Muldwil and his sons formed the mountains and hid gems in them, then created us dwarves from the mountains with a desire to find the gems and treasures they hid from us. And our history tells us it was the might of dwarves and our axes that beat the tyters and saved the elves, but the ingrates want the battle glory for themselves and rewrote history to make it look like they did it on their own. They could never beat the tyter warriors during a hunt.”

            Jex said “Maybe dwarves and elves worked together to beat the tyters thousands of years ago. Dwarf steel combined with elf spells.”

            “Bah. That never has and never will happen. And as good as dwarf steel is, we would need diamond blades and mithril armor to beat the tyters.”

            Graul said “It sounds like you guys have it all worked out. So we’ll just pack up our bags and be on our way back to our home. Been nice meeting you Baybil.”

            The others were a little shocked at Graul’s abrupt exit, but had known him or Torger to do that when conversations got tense. They walked back toward the ruins of Home and made it shortly after dark. There was nothing there for them, but Torger and Graul wanted to see it again and it wasn’t far out of the way.

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            Graul said “I look forward to see our real house when we get back to Earth.”

            The next morning they began walking west, over the rocky ground and around desert bushes. The temperature was wonderful and a steady breeze blew in. But the difficult terrain made the trip agonizingly slow. Along the way they talked about which modern conveniences each one was most looking forward to. They walked all day, killing three coyotes and two rabbits along the way. That night Rome killed a rattle snake on his watch, and that made him wish he had done more to contribute to the group since they arrived. If the snake had bit someone, they probably would have died, and Rome was supposed to be the white mage of the group. If he knew the spell Heal 1, he wouldn’t have to worry about a snake bite, the spell would heal the victim. But since arriving, he had not learned one single spell. He wasn’t in the battles very often, so he didn’t get much experience, and every time he saved an ability point or two he would end up dying and lose his experience and unused ability points. Everyone in the group had learned at least one spell. If they returned home, he would be the only one who didn’t know what it was like to use his specialty. Of course he wanted to go home, but still that sucked. He even made a water wheel that generated a small amount of electricity, but it was of no use. Rome made a pledge to himself that night that if they weren’t able to make it home from Catalina, he would have to get into more battles to start learning white magic.

            At the end of the next day they made it to the top of Kellogg Hill. From the top of the hill they watched a beautiful sunset. The land was different on the other side. Not rocky desert but instead it was fertile plains. They saw wild orange trees and strawberry patches growing. Here the weather was lovely year round, and millions of people on Earth crowded together on congested freeways to live and work in what was, as the Regulators saw, a prime settlement location. In the distance they saw a medium sized river bed, mostly dry, flowing to the south.

            “I can’t believe I forgot the LA river used to be an actual river!” exclaimed Torger. “We could have moved here for the summer.”

            They were all bemoaning the fact that they could have moved the village to this nice, year round climate with fertile soil. In modern California there were no natural rivers anywhere near LA, but the Nuva version seemed to produce a little more rainfall. They set up camp on the hill and finished the last of the dwarf food they had bought from Baybil.

  Early in the morning, Antic had the last watch. He was bored but was used to night lookouts by now. They all knew night watchmen had saved their lives several times. Just as the sky was beginning to turn grey with the first light, he heard a distant rumble. The whole group had lived in California all their lives. Each person half way woke up at the sound and waited to see if the ground was going to shake violently, or just a little. There was the first jarring shock that passed underground, and a few seconds later the ground rolled like ocean waves out at sea, not with the beach breakers. At the second rolling feeling they went back to sleep, never having seriously considered getting up. The rolling feeling told them either the earthquake was small or it was far away. They knew nearby big earthquakes usually have a continuous jarring feeling, so the rolling was a relief, not that there was anything to fall on them anyway.

In the morning after breakfast, they spotted an enormous rabbit. It was about six feet tall. It looked at them and hopped a little closer, sniffed, and hopped away. They watched it go into a large hole at the bottom of the hill. They’d seen strange things in Nuva, but that was up there. Arden wanted to follow it but the others wanted to get to the beach then get home.

They made it to Long Beach two days later, and Torger and Graul began to look for trees to chop.

“Torger, once we chop some trees down, how are we going to get them to the beach? They weigh nearly a ton, after we cut off the limbs.”

“We’ll try to roll them. If that doesn’t work, we’re going to be here a while splitting them in half long ways.”

Antic groaned at the thought of that much work. They each had a wood handled axe, purchased from Strong Arm on credit. They owed Baybil nineteen gold, and Strong arm two gold coins. They were literally running away from debt. The original plan was to bring several dwarves along to help make the raft, but Torger was unable to convince any of them to come. All the dwarves were too interested in getting back to the silver mines and continue building Calico.

Each of the regulators wanted to get home so badly they walked in all directions to the nearest pine or oak trees and began chopping. Naturally Torger and Graul finished first and went to help the others with their trees. It was sunset by the time they finished felling the seven trees. They were exhausted and hungry and ate roasted and unseasoned day old deer meat, but they ate all they had from the appetites they built up.

As they sat on the sand of Long Beach, they stayed quiet looking out at the ocean. Catalina was beautiful in the distance, with an orange, red, blue and purple sky.

Chapter 2

The Crossing

They had no food left to eat breakfast, but were too excited to get home. They went to the nearest tree and cut off all the branches, then all got on the high side and pushed. It budged a little and they pushed harder. The pine tree began to roll downhill toward the beach but it also required constant pushing. This went on for fifteen minutes, then it hit sand. And stopped completely. They pushed and pulled and tried to get it to move but it wouldn’t. After another twenty minutes they had moved it a foot.

As everyone sat on the log breathing hard, Torger knew they would need to place boards on the sand and roll the log on the boards. The trouble was, if they cut trees into flat boards, they would just make a raft out of the boards. He looked up and down the coast. Everywhere was either rocks or sand; they wouldn’t be able to roll logs to the water anywhere.

Reluctantly, Torger suggested the others go gather the oranges and strawberries from several miles away, and try to catch some meat while they were at it. Brun, Arden, Jex and Rome volunteered to go on food patrol. Torger, Graul, and Antic began cutting the length of the log in half.

It took the three of them all day to cut it in half, and they were very glad to see the others return. They ate an unappetizing meal of rabbit, oranges and strawberries, and from the looks of things that was going to be their meals for a while. Water was a problem yet again. They were running low and all the physical exertion meant they were going through it quick. Jex cast her Ice 1 spell at the log, but they only got a few drops of water out of it. It was a cold irony to go thirsty just feet away from the biggest ocean on the planet.

Rome volunteered to take first watch that night. While the others slept, he pulled out a frying pan and tin lid that wasn’t destroyed in the fire at Home. The dwarves had made some decent cooking utensils in Calico, and the Regulators brought that frying pan and some silverware with them to use on the trip to the beach. They never thought it would be useful for anything but frying meat, but Rome saw an opportunity.

In the morning they all started cutting the logs in half. Rome had put saltwater in the frying pan and covered it with the tin lid. Unfortunately it wasn’t a tight fit, both being a little warped from the fire at Home, and after a couple hours of sunlight, he was only able to get a teaspoon of water off the lid. That didn’t work, but the concept was tried and true. But Rome didn’t have any sheet metal to make a bedroom sized condensation catcher. A few of them would have to walk to the river, and although it was not far away it was only a couple inches deep. They would have to strain out the mud somehow.

The same four went to get water and figure out how to purify it. Torger and Graul preferred splitting the log because they knew they were the best at it, and Antic did it to gain another strength point. Even if they were going home in a few days, he wanted to be the strongest and most physically fit of the group when they left, because he wasn’t on Earth. They were all a little flabby on Earth, but Antic really enjoyed his new, now nicely shaped body. They grew a half inch in height and gained a little muscle mass every time they gained a strength point, and Antic made sure he was one ahead of everyone else. He had a strength of eight, while most of the others had six or seven. Antic never lost an ability point when he died. Every time he earned one from experience, he invested it into his body. He also had three hundred health compared to everyone else’s one hundred, and eighty stamina compared to the others who averaged forty-five.

At the end of the day the water carriers returned, and the other three had each gained a strength point and split another log. Rome and Arden had found at the river by pouring muddy water through clean sand, the mud would mostly disappear but would add a salt taste to the water.  Not knowing what else to do they brought back slightly muddy, slightly salty water. Torger told them to boil it in the frying pan and pour it through a clean cloth, into a water skin. Jex poured the water into the frying pan and Brun lit a fire, then Jex rinsed out the skin in the ocean. Ten minutes later they poured the water through Jex’s wool dress, and into the somewhat clean skin. After letting it cool Torger took a drink. Everyone looked at him to see his reaction. “Tastes like pond scum, but it’ll keep us alive.”

The next two days all seven of them worked on splitting the logs lengthwise. Each half log was able to be dragged to the water. The effort gave everyone another strength and stamina point. By now it was mid October and the days were great, but the night wind was chilly. Finally the big day came. Torger and Graul used the rope they bought with the ale tax to tie the half logs together. The waves were a little bigger than they would have liked, but winter was coming and they could get worse.

They pushed the raft into the ocean and climbed on top. Each one had a paddle carved from a tree limb and they rowed, a bit out of sync, but slowly made it past one breaker after another. It took two hours to get a quarter mile from shore, but then the waves were gentler. Jex, Brun, and Rome needed a break, and the others agreed to it. They kept rowing for another hour, and made it almost a mile from the shore.

Graul saw a big shadow pass under the water near him, and said “Hey guys. Heads up. I think I saw something in the water.”

Arden said “Sharks aren’t here this time of year. We should be OK.”

He spoke too soon. A giant octopus raised a tentacle onto the raft. Jex screamed and Arden hit it with his paddle. Torger reached into his backpack and pulled out his two handed steel sword, while Graul pulled out his one handed flame sword. Brun cast Fire 2 at it and the tentacle retracted back under the water. Everyone looked around on all sides of the raft waiting for the next attack.

Seconds ticked by but they saw nothing. More seconds passed, then a full minute. A few seconds later Antic put his paddle in the water to start rowing again towards Catalina, with much renewed vigor. Rome was thinking they should go back to the shore. Antic pulled on the paddle once and then another tentacle came on to the raft. It was about ten feet long and reached to the other side.

Torger and Graul sliced it, Jex cast Ice 1, and Brun and Arden cast Fire 1. Antic smashed it with his paddle, shattering the wood. He was left with a sharpened pole and immediately knew a short spear was just what he needed. The tentacle retracted again, but two more came up. This time they could see the octopus’ face. Antic stabbed it in the eye. Its body convulsed, and the suckers stuck to the wood. It swam towards deeper water, pulling the raft along. The sudden movement caused Brun to fall overboard. Arden reached out to grab his hand and pull him back up, but the octopus recovered from its shock and another tentacle came on board, knocking Arden into the water too. They looked at the others on board and Arden yelled “Go Home! We’ll figure out another way!”

Arden took off his leather armor and they started swimming back to shore. Jex yelled “No! I won’t leave you!” She jumped off and swam towards them.

Torger and Graul kept slicing at the tentacles, and Antic stabbed them, but the octopus wouldn’t let go. After a little while it tried to dive deep, but the wood was too buoyant, and the raft tipped up high. Torger and Graul had been white water rafting several times and when Torger yelled “High side!” he and Graul climbed up to the high side of the raft and held on to the edge. Rome and Antic had no idea what to do, and Antic was tossed into the ocean. He used what was left of his paddle as a flotation device and started swimming back toward shore. Rome slid right at the octopus’ face and he kicked it in the head, keeping his back wedged to the raft.

The octopus realized it couldn’t pull the raft underwater and stopped swimming. The raft that was tilted up slammed back down, and Torger and Graul both fell into the water. Their rafting experiences taught them how to quickly climb back up.

Once on board again, Torger said “It’s too dangerous. Pack your gear and get away.”

He and Graul took off their iron armor and put it and their swords into their magic back packs. But Rome didn’t move. With his feet still pummeling the octopus’ head, he said “I’ll keep it focused on me. Swim back to shore, and I’ll meet you back at Long Beach in a couple of weeks. I’ll respawn in Calico, I’ll be OK.”

Torger wanted to argue with him, to tell him they were in this together, but he knew Rome was right. Rome was in great position to be the sole focus of the sea monster. He didn’t like it but had to agree. “OK see you at the beach in two weeks.”

Torger and Graul put their magic backpacks on, thankful for the weight divided by five and capacity times five benefits, and jumped off each swimming to a nearby paddle to aid in their long swim back to shore.