bookpower 2.65 A New View
2.65 A New View
65 – A New View
Andy checked and double-checked his copies of the strange glyphs inscribed in the Lurikeen’s ring, ensuring he hadn’t missed any loops or whorls. When he was sure, he began cross-referencing them against the hundreds of glyphs that Lydia had copied down for him in the notebook. In the end, he found a dozen or so close matches, but nothing that was exactly the same—not a single one. Even so, his efforts weren’t in total vain. As he copied his row of similar glyphs, drawing arrows toward their Fae cousins, the System sent a bright yellow message dancing across his eyes:
***Congratulations, Andy! You’ve begun to decipher the elusive magical language of the Fae and have opened a previously hidden advancement path for your Glyphwright class. As you reach higher levels, new opportunities will present themselves.***
While encouraging, neither the message nor any of the runes he’d copied were doing anything to help Andy figure out what the ring was for. He weighed it in his hand—heavier than it looked—and thought about the next logical step: putting it on. He could feel the mana in it, and knowing it was from the Fae made him nervous. The thing was, he hadn’t exactly had it given to him. He’d taken it from the finger of a Lurikeen he’d killed in battle. In his mind, that made it pretty likely not to be some kind of trap.
Andy looked up; the cavern was noisy and people were milling about. Everyone was eager to get outside, and some folks were already moving their belongings out of the darkness. Lucy had gone to get breakfast after he’d told her about his visit with the System guide. Shrugging, he looked back down at the puzzle of the Lurikeen jewelry.
Andy tested the ring’s opening against his fingers and found the middle one on his right hand to be the best match. With a shrug, he pushed it over his knuckles. Suddenly, he became aware of a space, almost like there was a pocket he could pull open and look into. “Weird...” he muttered, mentally “peering” into the opening.
What he saw boggled his mind. Like a window into another dimension, he saw a big square room, and lined along its walls were barrels, sacks, and chests. Even as he studied the closest object, a wooden crate about a foot-square, it appeared before him, landing on his sleeping bag with a thud. The lid came ajar, and an apple rolled out. “What the hell?”
***Congratulations, Andy! You’ve discovered a Fae-crafted magical device: a dimensional container. As its new owner, the device has bonded to you, and you can now access the pocket dimension that lies within it.***
As the message faded, Andy picked up the pale green apple and turned it this way and that. It seemed perfectly fresh—perfectly normal. Had that Lurikeen been carrying around a ring full of supplies? He pushed the question aside, focusing on the other implication of the ring: the “dimension” it contained was a room about ten-feet square, and that meant he could carry a lot of stuff, pretty much wherever he wanted. “Unless there’s a weight limit...”
Peering into the ring’s magical space again, he didn’t think that would be the case. He saw half a dozen barrels and kegs, and at least ten boxes and crates. Hesitantly, he stretched out his hand to touch the crate of apples and simply thought about putting it back into the ring. It vanished. Andy peered into the ring, and there it was, stowed neatly away. “Holy shit!” he whispered.
Andy jumped to his feet and walked over to the wall of the cavern. His camp with Lucy was already near the corner, so it was a perfect place to lay out the contents of the ring for inspection. He wasn’t sure he ought to show off the ring’s capabilities, but nobody was paying him much attention and the effects weren’t flashy in any way. He was curious, and if the contents were what he thought they were, the citizens of the mesa could use them.
He started with the crate of apples, placing it in the corner. Then he moved down the wall, unloading all the other containers: wooden boxes, barrels, and sacks. When Lucy approached, he was just finishing up, and he glanced at her with a smile. “Hey, can you find Bea? We need her to check this stuff out.”
“Where did it come from?”
Andy held up his fist, tapping the ring. “The Lurikeens.”
“What do you mean?” Lucy frowned, walking over to the row of containers. She pulled open one of the cloth sacks. “Potatoes?”
“There are all kinds of food. These are full of nuts and dried fruit.” Andy tapped his toe against one of the flat-topped, latching wooden boxes.
“But why’d they give them to us? It must be a trick.”
“No, I mean, they were in this ring.” Andy held out his hand again. “It’s magic.”
“You took that off one of the ones you killed, right?”
Andy nodded. “Yeah, and I can put other stuff in it. Like, it has a storage room inside it!”
“We should keep that quiet for now, Andy. I doubt the Lurikeens are happy about losing that thing.” She gestured to the supplies. “All this.”
“Yeah. Good point.” Andy stooped to his pile of clothes and belongings, picking up his leather fighting gloves. As he tugged them on, covering the ring, he said, “Anyway, I want Bea to check this stuff out. She can sense poison and corruption. I don’t feel any mana in any of these foods or containers, but I’m not sure how much I can rely on that.”
“I saw her over by the kitchen.” Lucy turned and started off, but Andy grabbed her wrist.
“I can get her. Not sure why I asked you to. I mean—”
“Oh hush. I don’t mind.” She stood on her tiptoes and gave him a quick peck on the cheek, then, smiling at his flustered attempt to reply, turned and hurried off.
After a moment, when his brain began to function again, Andy bent to pick up his notebook. He drew a circle around the glyphs from the ring and wrote beneath them: Something to do with creating a pocket dimension or, at least, a dimensional container.
Before long, Lucy returned with Bea, and the Water Witch worked her magic, checking for corruption, and said she couldn’t find any. There were apples, pears, dried nuts and seeds, dried berries, grain, flour, and even two little kegs of honey. The barrels contained wine and something that smelled a lot like beer. All told, the containers easily held weeks’ worth of food for their settlement, and much more if they just used it to supplement the supplies they’d been gathering on their own.
It was a lucky find for the settlement, and Andy figured it would help a lot with morale. The fish from the lake was good, but a steady diet of fish, while nourishing, was already getting old. It wasn’t that they’d consumed every other foodstuff they’d gathered earlier on in the apocalypse, but the folks in charge of cooking were trying to make the non-perishables last.
When Bea finished checking everything over, Andy said, “We should keep from mentioning that this came from the Lurikeens. Just let folks know it was a System-reward or something. I’m not trying to fool our people, but I don’t want them to go up there and talk about ‘the Lurikeens’ food’ while the Fae are up there working on their ship and maybe interacting with us.”
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Bea nodded. “Probably smart. I’ll get some of the supply folks to move this into the cook tent, and we’ll use it sparingly until those little folks are gone.”
“Thanks, Bea.” Andy smiled at Lucy. “Walk with me a bit?”
She nodded, stooping to pick up her magical bow. “It would be my pleasure, good sir.”
Bea snorted, shaking her head. “You two are adorable.” She stepped close to Andy, poking him in the chest as she added, “Don’t go off on any more adventures without talking to me, Andy! I need more levels—same as you two.”
Andy chuckled. “I won’t, I won’t.”
“Mmhmm.” Bea winked at him, then turned to saunter toward the center of the cavern.
Andy looked at Lucy and arched an eyebrow. “She seems even younger.”
Lucy nodded, clicking her tongue. “Tell me about it.”
Andy grabbed his spear from where it leaned against the wall, and while he held it, he had an idea. With a moment of focus, he “opened” the ring’s dimensional space and sent the spear into it. Grinning, he held his hand out, away from Lucy, and mentally “reached” in, taking hold of the spear. It appeared in his hand. “Oh, that’s too damn cool!”
“That’s not really fair!” Lucy cried.
Andy smiled at her. “We need to figure out how to do this kind of magic.”
She nodded, watching as he sent the spear back into his ring. He started walking, and she hurried to take his hand. “You can work on that while I’m on my hunt.”
“That’s a promise.” As he turned past the stairwell room, toward the short tunnel leading to the exit, he looked at her sideways. “Leaving soon, do you think?”
She nodded. “I feel a kind of pressure.” When he arched an eyebrow, she shook her head. “Not like that; it’s not the System or anything. I just—well, I want to keep advancing, and I know this is my next step. I mean, I could pick up another class and try to gather Improvement Points, but I want to see what’s next with my Monster Hunter class. Don’t you think having a powerful main class will come in handy when the other, um, settlers come?”
Andy nodded. “Hell yes, I do.”
“Besides”—she squeezed his hand—“I don’t want you to leave me behind.”
He chuckled, shaking his head as he started up the ladder. “Not a chance.” As he emerged from the hole, he had to squint against the bright glare of the sun. It seemed the storm was fully over. A few scattered clouds lingered beyond the boughs of the huge mesquites, but the sky was bright, and the ground, while still soggy with puddles here and there, was nothing close to as water-logged as it had been. He reached down to take Lucy’s hand, helping her the rest of the way up.
“We’ll need to improve that opening if we’re going to operate a mine down there,” Omar said, approaching from the edge of the platform. Andy nodded, holding out his fist. Omar bumped his knuckles against Andy’s, grinning. “Couldn’t really keep people from wandering after being cooped up. Hope you’re right about the harpies and little people.”
Andy looked into the nearby treetops. “The harpies are still hanging around?”
Omar followed his gaze, squinting. “Well, they were. Haven’t seen one in a while, though.”
“What about the Lurikeens?”
“Mostly keeping to their airship, but, well, I can only ever see a couple when my patrol takes me past.”
Andy nodded. “They’re good at hiding.” He nodded to Lucy. “We’re gonna take a walk down to the Whisperwood. You good?”
Omar formed his fist into a thumbs-up. “Oh yeah. I’m not alone—four of us patrolling right now.”
“Cool. I’ll come help out soon.”
Omar shifted his shield, squinting toward the sun, which was already half-way up the eastern sky. “Sounds good. I’m gonna do another circuit.” With that, he turned and stepped down from the mud-covered platform, his feet squelching softly on the trail as he wandered off between a pair of mesquites.
“It’s so different,” Lucy observed, walking to the edge of the platform. “I can’t even see the roads.”
“They’re there—well, most of them.” Andy hopped down into a patch of fresh grass. “Things are growing like crazy, though. We need to get people raking and shoveling if we want to keep any pathways.”
“Well, that’s what we should do—make pathways. We don’t need to uncover the entire roadway.”
Andy shrugged. “I think we should keep at least a couple of main lanes—roads broad enough to move wagons down. I mean, you’ve got a point, though. It’s not like we’re gonna be driving any trucks up to the top of the plateau. Hell, I guess we won’t be pulling any wagons up, either. We need to let Tucker get to work on that cargo lift idea of his, though.”
Lucy took his hand again, and they meandered between the trees toward the main gate. “You think Lydia’s people are all gonna come here?”
“Great question. We still don’t have a clue what happened over there during the storm.” Andy thought about it as they took a few more steps, then added, “I think they should, though. With mana, monsters, dungeons, invasions, magical storms, and the Faewild—the world is bigger than it used to be. I feel like we need to consolidate our strength here. At least for now.”
“I agree.”
When they reached the gate, they found Bernice and a few others busily hacking at and clearing away the overgrown tumbleweeds. She smiled and waved as they approached. “Amazing how fast tumbleweeds grow, and that was before magical storms!”
Andy laughed, nodding.
“We’ll pitch in soon,” Lucy said, gesturing toward the mesa’s edge. “We just want to take a little look around.”
“Sure, sure. We’re all just glad to be out of the dark and cold.” Bernice mopped her forehead with a handkerchief—it was especially humid as the sunlight evaporated the groundwater—and then brandished her machete. “Back to it!”
Andy and Lucy continued through the gate, and when they reached the trailhead, they both paused, dumbstruck by the change in scenery. Down below, the Sonoran Desert had gone through a transformation. It reminded Andy a little bit of how things always got greener during monsoon season, but multiplied by ten—or maybe a hundred. He could still see desert plants, but they were changed—bigger, plumper, greener.
He saw a saguaro that had to be a hundred feet tall—fat and mighty, with arms that looked like they weighed thousands of pounds each. Even the cholla cacti were bigger, and though they were too distant to see clearly, Andy shivered at the thought of the spines that must adorn those big plump pads. “It’s like the mana in the storm infused everything.”
“It probably did,” Lucy replied, nodding. “The world’s changing. Look at the hillside over there.”
Andy followed her pointing finger and saw what she meant. It looked like a proper forest covered the foothills of the Catalinas. “I guess that means we’re gonna be seeing more rain. I don’t think we can really call this a desert anymore.”
Lucy shook her head. “But instead of dying, the desert plants are, like, evolving.”
Andy tugged her hand, starting down the trail. “Come on. Speaking of plants, you gotta see the Whisperwood.”
All the while they’d been walking, Andy had kept his Flame Sight spell active, and he’d been scanning, looking for any sign of lurking Fae. He’d asked Enthian to keep his people close to his airship, but he was surprised that he seemed to be complying; so far, Andy hadn’t seen any of the little people. At the bottom of the trail, he pointed to the mostly erased gravel road. “We need to haul stuff from Construction City as soon as possible. I don’t know if we’ll have more storms like the one we just had in store, but this road won’t last much longer.”
“Seems like nature is...harsher.” Lucy shook her head, correcting herself, “Maybe more resilient.”
Andy led the way through the thick green stands of greasewood, prickly pear, desert rangers, and then around a huge ocotillo, which he eyed speculatively, thinking of James’s spear recipe. Before long, they came into sight of the expansive Whisperwood Grove. There were thousands of trees stretching away to the south, tall and elegant, with broad canopies of straight, springy limbs. He pointed, saying, “It goes all the way to the lake.”
“Lake?”
Andy grinned, nodding. “The pond at the base of the waterfall is about a hundred times bigger now.” He led the way over to where he’d buried the Lurikeens’ portal pieces and weapons, then he paused, turning in a slow circle, looking up into trees, between trunks, and then further out, into the thick green, thorny brush that bordered the grove.
“What are you looking for?”
“Lurikeens.”
Lucy nodded, turning to look around. “I wish I could see them. I hope I get a better sight spell as I advance my class.”
When nothing stirred, and Andy failed to see any bright little eyes peering his way, he stooped to brush aside the mulch he’d piled over the objects. They were still there. He didn’t lift anything out; instead, he just touched each object and sent it into his new magical ring. When he was sure he’d gotten every piece, he stood and brushed his gloves together, knocking away the damp dirt and bark.
“Was that—”
“Yeah.” Andy nodded, holding a finger to his lips. “Best to be paranoid about those things.”
Lucy nodded. “Well? Shall we go help out up top?”
“Yep!” Andy put an arm over her shoulders, and together they returned the way they’d come, climbing up the path to the mesa, where the work of rebuilding had only just begun.