Oskar was finally able to get the swelling down some a few minutes after sloppily drinking down a whole skin of Wayspring water. He took off his leg and spent the time cleaning and drying his liner as he waited for the healing to take hold, unwilling to let Erik tax himself by healing him quicker. He even called on his Resonating Ward, and possibly due to Rakiyu, even the healing properties of the water increased noticeably.
There’s more I practice this magic, the more I realize I know so little about it.
Thankfully, instead of the sarcastic comment he expected, the PUB replied encouragingly.
// That’s been a boon to you so far, look at all the power you’ve gained. Good job on not immediately working on the Cryon, though. As tempting as that might be to be able to create a cool breeze or build up an aura of it, you’re working on what you know before you move on. Even if it’s only because Fox told you to.
You know it’s not only because Fox told me her plan revolved around my Resonating Ward… it’s only a part of it.
// Well, good job on staying out of trouble, then. Bastet might have given you some measure of your power, you’re a long way away from where she was. Building a foundation around it first is going to help you in the long run, especially when it seems like it’s going to take a good amount of Rakiyu. It’s good that you know when you need to slow down and figure things out. To learn. Maybe Fox’s mysterious Chief can help, if he still lives. //
She seems confident he does. I think most of her fear is the implication of being wrong. The ‘what if?’
The PUB didn’t reply, so Oskar gave the questioning Fox a nod.
“I think I’m pretty much better. Most of my vision is back,” he added sarcastically.
Fox grinned at him, stood, and they started walking. Thankfully, Touwon was no longer looking sideways at him.
They walked in the dry, brutal heat for another hour, and then for reasons he couldn’t quite figure out, his shadow caught his attention. On further inspection, he noticed there was a fainter, second shadow, and he stopped, looking around and then at the suns. He stared at them curiously for a few seconds before he finally decided they were further apart than they had been when he first started paying close attention to the sky.
For the first time in the middle of the day, the overlapping lights from the two suns cast two noticeable shadows. Usually, the huge red sun overpowered the meager light from its small blue sister sun unless the red was setting. Usually there was only a few minutes of double shadows until they switched for the short amound of time the blue sun was alone in the sky.
Oskar called out to Fox, who was still walking at the head of the group, “What is up with the double shadows?”
“Midsummer. The suns are at their farthest points in the sky. This is how we know summer is dying. But, for now,” she pulled her leather vest out with her thumbs to let air in, “we cook.”
Under her breath, she added, “And I am fully cooked. That is a truth.”
Smiling, Oskar looked back up at the suns, considering. Knowing a little more than he suspected the Kobolds did about astronomy, he expected they had just gotten to a point in this world’s rotations around the suns that it appeared the suns were further apart, but for all he knew, saying that out loud would prove him wrong, so he said nothing about that and instead asked Fox about the seasons.
“I’m guessing afterwards, there’s just another summer, right?”
That one got him a flat look from Fox, but then her face softened, and she said, “No, the seasons are spring, summer, autumn, and dream. They have older names, too. They have also been known as Haruki, Natshi, Akaze, and Tsumatai Kioku.”
“Why is dream, or Winter in my world, two words? What does that mean, and why is it called dream?” Oskar asked in a rush before his PUB got too excited and gave him a full breakdown of the meanings of the words.
She was quiet for a moment, and Oskar minimized the excited scrolling of words across the inside of his Goggled until she answered.
“I believe it translates to ‘cold memory’ or something like that. I do not speak it all of the old language; I only know a few words. I suppose it is called dream now because the nights are longer. Benedictudo could explain it better.”
Oskar nodded, appreciating the distraction as sweat rolled down his spine under his now threadbare shirt.
I’m hoping old Ben can explain a lot of stuff. Just because I’m pushing forward… just because Erik and I have a path now doesn’t mean I know what’s going on. It’s still surreal. I’m still on a desert planet with druid powers. At least I have more than water sense now. I’m strong enough to keep everyone safe.
Oskar couldn’t stop a small smile and a sense of accomplishment.
They walked as the heat bore down on them, the horizon still shimmering with hazy ripples. Even the perfect, normally liquid smooth streamers of sand looked wavy in the heat. They also cast odd double shadows that kept catching Oskar’s peripheral vision when they occasionally walked underneath one.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Oskar kept an eye on the others, especially Erik, walking with Fox and setting the pace for the group. Erik kept up, but Oskar made sure to close the distance and hit his brother with the Resonating Ward more and more as the heat picked up. Every time he felt the heat getting to him, he figured it was time to make the rounds.
The only one that didn’t seem to care either way was Sara, who was so stretched out on Touwon’s swaying bag that her feet were dangling off both sides as she slept. Regardless, Oskar made it a point to keep everyone as fresh as possible. As the heat picked up, even the Kobolds tightened up to take refuge in Oskar’s magic.
All I really want to do is fly into the stratosphere to see if it’s cooler up there.
// Yeah… uh… //
Spit it out.
// Pedant alert: So, not sure what your words are for it, but what you call the stratosphere is the second layer and usually gets hotter as you rise until the third layer. Also, you probably couldn’t breathe up there, so you’d need to learn to bring a bubble of oxygen with you. Okay, that’s all. //
So, either stay near the top of the first layer, or go to the third and probably die. Got it.
He tried to maintain the Ward the entire time since the drain on his capacity was much less after the initial casting, so he could keep it up for a much longer while just holding it. The constant, smooth hum of its energy a familiar weight against his attention and Capacity. All in all, a small price to pay for the cooler air and the added protection. The cooling effect was barely noticeable when it was this hot, and didn’t seem to directly be a part of his Cryon Concept.
Thinking about the Concept was a dangerous thing to add into the mix of his weary, overheated thoughts, and the heat was making it harder to do the right thing and build on his foundation. In a moment of curiosity and weakness, he tried to use Cryon with his Ward and staggered at the sudden increase in the pull on his Capacity. It didn’t empty him, but the pull was unexpected, and he lost the Resonating Ward completely.
He saw both Erik and Fox jerk their heads over at him, eyes wide in worry until he waved that he was fine.
“Just overdid it a little, I’ll stop pushing so much.”
Erik called him a dumbass just loud enough for him to hear, and behind them, Oskar heard Touwon chuckle. Oskar ignored them both and focused on what little he might be able to learn from his mistake.
Well… turns out the cooling effect was way more effective than I thought it was, he thought as a fresh wave of heat washed over him, and Oskar was convinced for a few seconds that his eyes were sweating.
And Cryon is obviously something that needs to be practiced on its own.
He hastily re-summoned the Resonating Ward, and felt his Capacity stabilize again. He pulled out a waterskin and took a long pull, letting the Wayspring water do its thing as he considered the spell and how to improve it more than just its range.
Technically, once I get the whole thing going, it’s nearly free. I spend more energy on the Sora and Talau cost activation than I do maintaining it. It feels ridiculously overpowered, considering everything it does… especially now that I know how much it can cool us off. The hardest part is maintaining the attention it takes to keep it going.
But even that was getting easier. He could now extend the Ward a few paces; a little over four meters.
Reaching out with his drastically improved senses, he felt several Waysprings in the distance… as well as a pair of giant asps, a thing that felt like a scorpion, but was so large, Oskar was tempted to steer their little Collective over for a look-see, but if the scorpion didn’t kill him, he was pretty sure Fox would. Touwon probably wouldn’t even notice.
Or maybe he would notice and just wouldn’t care, Oskar thought with a smirk.
There was much, much more life in the desert than he thought possible. It made him shiver thinking about the one day he’d walked, surviving my sheer luck, before he’d gotten access to his ability to sense water and life.
The wind was picking up, even in the usually still valley, and it made one of the streamers of sand overhead bend slightly in a way that had Penny beside him even look up for a moment before running off after a morsel a few yards away.
“She literally eats all the time,” Oskar commented under his breath.
“I don’t know why we’re not constantly starving. I mean, we eat, but the only thing I can think of is there are some calories in the Wayspring water. They were only giving me droplets mixed in with the nasty cactus juice, and I was definitely hungry the entire time,” Erik said, holding out his stick thin arm for reference.
“I can’t imagine, man.”
“Nah, we aren’t doing that right now, man. Let’s just get to safety and kill that psycho, and then we’ll work on finding a Croc therapist or something to help me work through my issues.” Erik grinned, still walking.
Oskar laughed at the image. “Could you imagine? ‘Good day, stupid pink. Share to me your weakness.’”
“You try beating smaller Crocs yet? Hit them bunches. It always make me feel good,” Erik continued, and Oskar had to admit his Croc voice was way better than his.
“How bouts you eat oneteen pounds of lizard meat? I trade you one rock. It good trade. For us. For me,” Oskar tried, and Erik laughed harder than the impression deserved. After his brother caught his breath, he explained why.
“You sound like Adam Sandler doing the talking goat voice. Your Croc impression is awful, man,” he wheezed out.
“Dude, I totally forgot about that!”
“Goodnight, Old Man!”
They went back and forth quoting the wildly inappropriate skit, and Erik somehow knew a fair amount of The Goat Song, which Oskar had only heard a time or two, but even Touwon was smiling at their antics, especially when they tried to explain what a goat was to the Kobolds.
If Touwon had questions, he didn’t voice it, of course, but Fox got hung up on the head-butting aspect, and kept repeating, “But why would they hit things with their own heads? It makes no sense.”
The brothers didn’t have a suitable answer for that, and that made it even funnier.
They all froze as the ground beneath them began to shake, and Oskar realized his distraction, as needed as it was, had allowed him to walk over something living and huge, or at least let it sneak up on them, which was even worse. He felt a little better when he realized he couldn’t feel anything below them other than the moving ground.
So, either it has some kind of protective ability, or its strong enough to mask its presence from me… and neither one of those options feels amazing to me.
“Please tell me this isn’t another Kevin Bacon reference,” Oskar whispered as he dropped his center of gravity and listened.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Erik whispered back at him.
He was grinning when he said it, but the smile faded as they as the dunes on both sides of them collapsed. As the sand rushed in, they were forced to move to stay on top of the rising sand in the dune valley.
How big is this thing?!