bookpower Book 5: Chapter 28: Presents
Book 5: Chapter 28: Presents
Book 5: Chapter 28: Presents
Heretical Fishing
Two weeks later, on a shore far south of Tropica, my reel made its customary thunk as it slid into place. I recalled the first time using this rod, the sense of novelty, the feeling of anticipation. The novelty might have faded, but my anticipation sure hadn’t. Neither had my love for the woman beside me.
Maria and I stood on an unexplored section of coast. Behind us, the forest stretched almost all the way to the beach, only a thin strip of sand dividing tropical palms from the softly lapping waves. The sun set above the greenery, coursing inexorably down toward the western mountains.
Maria caught me stealing another look. Her face lit up. “This honeymoon was a wonderful idea, Fischer.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself.”
Borks agreed with a playful groan. He flopped to his back and wiggling side to side in the sand. I crouched to pat his fluffy belly, but froze when the line against my finger twitched.
Bump.
I craved myself, ready to strike.
Bump.
Bump. Bump.
They were the testing bites of something small, likely not big enough to justify keeping for dinner, but that didn’t discourage me. The fish ate the bait, and the fight began. I set the hook softly, heart fluttering despite the relative triviality of the fish, just as it had every time I’d used my new rod.
I was yet to hook anything massive, but even the humble fish on the end of my line was difficult to catch. I felt every shake of its head through my line, and when it turned to the left, the rod’s tip was dragged with it. Two enriching minutes later, I brought it to shore.
“Thanks, fishy,” I said, freeing it from my line and lowering it into the water. With a few rapid kicks of its tail, it vanished from view. I attached a fresh strip of eel to my hook, flicked the reel forward with a heavy thunk, and cast it out once more, the tackle landing with a tiny splash out past the waves. “We should have done this sooner.”
Maria rested her head against my arm, her eyes closed and forefinger resting on her line. “I think the timing was perfect. You wouldn’t have enjoyed it so much without your new rod. Besides, you can hardly be blamed for putting it off. Neither of us can. We had a lot going on.”
“We still do,” I replied, sensing my chi pouring down into the ground. The network of tunnels was almost half full. The secretive third party had increased their output over the past two weeks, which had really added up over time.
Maria leaned her head against my shoulder. “With any luck, it’ll be finished by the time we get back.”
“You think it’ll last that long?”
“Our honeymoon?”
“I was gonna say the peace, but that too. I’m surprised we’ve gone so long without something coming up.”
“Oh. Right.”
Something in the tone of her voice made me peer down at her. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s just... I can feel how much these last couple of weeks have helped you. I mean, I can literally feel it.” She reached up and squeezed my trap muscle. “You were so tense before we left. Ever since you started powering the tunnels, it’s like someone wound you a little tighter every day. Since we left on this trip, though, it's the opposite. A little bit of tension leaves you each morning.” She leaned closer and waggled her eyebrows. “And each night. Wonder why that is?”
I barked a laugh, and she continued.
“I don’t think you're ready to go back yet. I’m not saying this only because I want you all to myself—which I very much do—but I think we should spend as long as possible out here. We shouldn’t head back unless you’re actually needed. I’m talking a life or death situation.”
“What if we run out of coffee?”
“Obviously. I said we could go back for a life or death scenario, and coffee is life.”
We smiled at each other, and I pulled her into a side-hug, my fishing rod preventing me from giving her the affection she deserved. “You’re right. I know you are. I feel myself again, but I can’t help but feel a little—” Crack! “—guilty.”
We both glanced at the bolts of lightning rapidly fading in the northwestern sky.
“What do you think she’s up to?” I asked.
“Something borderline treasonous, no doubt.”
I barked a laugh. “If not her, then RPM for sure. I wonder which of them is worse?”
“Impossible to say. It’s hard to tell where Claws’s degeneracy ends and the raccoon’s begins.”
My eyes drifted toward the orange-to-blue gradient painting the western horizon. “Two weeks without checking up on everyone... that has to be a record for me.”
“It is.” Again, her tone told me something was wrong, but this time it was playful. She smirked back at me, rolling her eyes. “Go on, then.”
“What?”
She sighed, leaned her head against me, and rubbed my back. “You’re allowed to check up on them, Fischer.”
“But—”
“But it’s our honeymoon,” she interrupted, putting on a gruff, vaguely insulting voice. “And I should be focused on you, my beautiful, flawless, and humble wife, who is better than me at fishing and tells way funnier jokes than I do.” She laughed and continued normally. “You’ve been present this whole time. Go on. Treat yourself to a little peek.”
I opened my mouth, but she held up a hand to forestall my objection.
“Let’s skip the back-and-forth. You’ll ask, are you sure? I’ll say, yes. Then you’ll be all, but you just said I needed more time,
and I’ll say, well, yeah, but maybe you checking up on everyone will reassure you that they don’t need your help right now, and you should instead focus in your honeymoon with your gorgeous, tanned, and always-correct wife. Besides...” She met my gaze with a smug grin. “Claws is always most immediately passionate after failing or succeeding at something. If you wait any longer to check what that lightning was about, you might miss the show entirely.”
“Frack me,” I swore. Maria really was always right. I reached out sluggishly with tendrils of essence that sped up the longer I controlled them.
“Brittle! Weak! Useless!” screeched Claws a moment later. “Stupid rock! Stupid rock! Stupid rock!” Each proclamation was accompanied by the sound of... shattering glass?
She started to say more but paused. She’d sensed my attention, my lack of power making me clumsy. I fled from the irate otter, dissipating that tendril and shooting along another to the northwest.
“Are... are you sure?” hissed Shelly, sounding nervous.
“Do it,” replied Pistachio.
“I—I don’t know if I’m ready.”
Pistachio paused stoically. “You can take it.”
My eyes flew wide and I fled that scene even faster than the previous. It was probably less intimate than it sounded, but I wasn’t hanging around to find out. Maria giggled softly in my mind.
The next location was kilometers to the east, deep beneath the waves. I found my trusty guard crab right where I’d expected. Though I had a rough idea of what I would find so far underwater, the imagery still brought me up short. All of her bonded crustaceans—rock crabs and shrimps and the humans who’d attained carcinization—meditated in a circle around her, their snippers limp and swaying in the ocean currents of a cavernous ravine. Like Claws, Snips sensed my awareness, so I departed before I could disturb her.
The next location was within Tropica. Cal and Fathom. The two cephalopods had been sketchy as anything since the meeting with Ellis. Every time I had tried to contact them before leaving for my honeymoon, they’d pushed me away, so I gave them some distance, not wanting to be found out. But then I felt the others there with them and couldn’t help but drift closer.
Interesting. The lava elemental? George and Geraldine, too. Wait, is that—
“Leeeave!” boomed Fathom, not inviting rebuttal.
I obliged, withdrawing my awareness—though only after blowing the requisite raspberry in his mind.
I checked up on a certain underground structure next, where I found the children guarded by a bear and once more doing what they yearned for.
“Hang on!” Paul yelled, crouching down and peering intently at a lump of reddish stone. “I’ll come play soon! I’m trying to guess the iron content of this rock!”
“Boooo!” Toby droned.
“Boooooo!” his sister agreed.
My eyebrows rose at the look on Paul’s face. He had his back to his friends, mouth pressed into a thin line, eyes closed as he took a deep breath, trying not to let his frustration morph into anger.
“Come onnnn!” Toby called. We’ve been working all day! Let’s explore for a bit before the sun sets!”
“Yeah! Come onnnn!” Theresa had climbed onto Teddy’s back and was rocking back and forth with impatience. “We can’t see in the dark! You promised we could explore!”
Paul’s cheek twitched. He gave a half snarl, then took another breath, sighed it out, and stood, letting go of his emotions. “You’re right. Sorry.”
“Yayyyy!” Theresa clapped, wiggled a happy little dance atop Teddy, and started chanting. “‘Ven-tur-ing! ‘Ven-tur-ing! ‘Ven-tur-ing!”
I frowned at the expression I’d seen on Paul. I lacked the strength to probe his emotions without him knowing, so my mind whirled with different possibilities. Had asking him to help the other children been too much...?
“Stop that.” Maria squeezed my arm. “Teddy’s with them constantly now. You should focus on the positives—Toby is pressuring Paul to play. It’s almost as if he’s remembered he’s a kid.”
Just like the boy I was worrying about, I let my misgiving go with a sigh. She was right, of course. “Though I bet he’d revert to being a ‘cool teen’ instantly if he heard you call him a ‘kid’.”
“Or if he knew we were watching.”
Content to leave it for now, I checked on another... but Lemon wasn’t in her grove. I cocked my head to the side, using an entire partition to scan Tropica, then using another to scan the surrounding lands when I didn’t find her in the village. Where was she...? With panic prickling my chest, I used a third partition to scan my surroundings.
It was a desperate move—why would she be near me, so far south of Tropica?—so when I found her only hundreds of meters away, I whirled toward the forest separating us, a line creasing my brow.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Ruff!
My best-bud’s bark was loud in the waking world, and even louder in my mind, sweeping aside my thoughts. I shook my head and turned toward him. His tail was wagging so hard that the rest of his body had joined in, his back legs sliding side-to-side in the sand.
“A secret...?” I asked.
Ruff! He confirmed.
“And you’re in cahoots with Lemon...?”
He ran circles around us, barking nonstop, limbs a blur.
“How am I supposed to focus on anything else now that I know there’s a conspiracy going on just a few hundred meters—”
Bump.
I cut off, head whirling around, conspiracies forgotten.The tip of my rod moved with the next bump, confirming the first hadn’t just been wishful thinking.
“Take it...” I whispered.
Bump, bump. Bump!
That last one had some weight to it. The stillness that followed seemed to last forever.
“Bite it, fishy. You want free food, don’t you? Doesn’t that strip of eel smell delicious?”
“Looks like he already forgot about the secret, Borks.” I could hear the smile in Maria’s voice. “You’re in the clear.”
Borks wagged his tail, just happy to be included, as usual.
“Come on...” I felt the urge to wind the line in and check the bait. If the fish had stolen the last strip from the hook, leaving my tackle out there would be a mistake. But if it hadn’t, and it was instead biding its time, reeling it in would scare it away. “You’re hungry, fishy. You’re starving.”
Another span of seconds passed, and still nothing. I let out a hissed breath. “Damn.” I drew the line in slowly at first, but when no bite came, I started retrieving at full—
“Fish on!” I yelled, scrambling to my feet, holding the pole high to set the hook. And what a fish. The thing’s head thrashed, its powerful tail thumping as it tried to escape. “Massive frackin’ fish on!”
I had caught so many things over the last two weeks that I’d lost count. Combined, my numerous catches had granted intimate knowledge of my new rod and its rigid length—Oh, grow up, Maria. You know I meant my fishing pole. She chortled in my mind.
A mature shore fish had been the largest thing I’d landed so far. Whatever this was, it was way, way bigger. It tore a path from land to horizon, its immense headshakes sweeping my rod from side to side. I’d assumed size was unimportant when fishing with this rod—it made every catch a challenge—but as I strained against the creature on the end of my line, I realized just how wrong I’d been.
Size was important after all.
“Yeah it is!” Maria choked out.
“Stop!” I laughed, failing to hide my amusement. “I need to—Woah!”
The massive creature swam down, making my reel’s drag scream. Then it raced to the surface at speed and leaped from the ocean. Time seemed to freeze as it kicked in the air, gigantic tail thrashing back and forth, flinging arcs of water in every direction.
It was the color of mottled sand, its fins so dark they were almost black. The creature’s head was a full third of its length, but the rest was pure muscle, two hulking fillets lining each side of its frame. Though the shape reminded me of the shovelnose rays we had occasionally caught, it was undeniably unique. I’d never seen one of its kind on Kallis.
I locked in, as did Maria, the echoes of her mirth vanishing from our connection.
The fish crashed back down with a heavy slap, and it was once more tearing away, my line cutting the ocean from left to right as the unidentified beast raced off in that direction. After seeing its body, I finally understood the massive sweeps of its head, but still they seemed too strong, too wide. It slowed a touch. I considered tightening the drag and winding it in. An impulse stayed my hand—thank the gods it did.
It reached deep into its reserves and sped off again, its defiance clear, moving the swiftest it had yet. I stared down at the dwindling line on my reel. I faced an impasse—tighten the drag and risk it snapping my line, or have it spool me and snap off anyway. Gritting my teeth, I clicked the drag three times, making it expend more energy. The line raced away, and on an impulse, I loosened the drag one click. With that, the stage was set, and my vision shrank. I saw nothing beyond my line, the ocean, and the creature beneath.
We took turns, both of us stealing line when we could. I couldn’t say how many rounds we went for. I couldn’t say how long it took. Five to ten minutes, maybe. The rest of the world slowly returned to my awareness as its defiant runs grew weaker and shorter, but the fish was always the center of my world.
Before I realized it, I was knee-deep in the small waves. Twin swirls of water announced the fish’s presence only meters away, and with a few more winds, its head came into view, sweeping to the left, the ancient creature taking one last stand.
I strode up to it and lowered an arm, grabbing it under the gills. Maria appeared at my side and relieved me of the rod, freeing my other hand to lift the animal by its thick belly.
“Frack me...” Maria and I both said, too awed to say anything else.
Ancient Sand Flathead
Rare
Found along the ocean shores of the Kallis Realm, this fish is...
The words disappeared without fanfare, almost immediately succeeded by others.
[Error: inaccuracy limit exceeded.]
Recalculating...
They, too, were dragged away, replaced by a series of blinking ellipses, which were also subsequently banished.
Species re-identification bonus: +10 to fishing! Congratulations!
Then returned the description. It had changed.
Ancient Sand Flathead
Mythic
Found along the ocean shores of the Kallis Realm, this fish was once a staple source of food. Their numbers sharply declined following the gods’ departure, which killed all but the hardiest of them. Those that survived did so via hibernation.
They are one of few creatures possessing the innate ability to incorporate the world’s chi into themselves, making the venomous spines on the sides of their gill plates potentially deadly to the awakened, and fatal to the unawakened. These spines, along with the venom within, are a prized alchemical ingredient.
Acutely aware of my hand’s proximity to its gills, I covered my left arm in a barrier of essence and carefully thumbed the twin barbs on one side of its head, finding them just as sharp as expected, but not enough to pierce my skin, even if it wasn’t protected.
As the fish kicked feebly, my mind raced, drawing what conclusions I could from the various System messages. With power returning to our little pocket of the world, it seemed this fish’s hibernation was no longer necessary. An entire species, once functionally extinct, had been revived.
Maria swallowed audibly, her mouth dry. “The alchemists would kill for this...”
“They would.”
“What are you gonna do with it?”
I shook my head, attempting to slow the information whirling in my mind. “I’d be lying if I said I don’t want to take it back to our camp and cook up a feast. Look at the meat on this thing. And it was a staple food source, despite being deadly. That means it has to taste godsdamned delicious.”
Maria nodded. “My mouth is watering just thinking about it.”
Borks leaned forward and gave it some rapidfire sniffs, his tail raised high, the yellow fur on his lower body drifting languidly in the water.
I abruptly smiled at the ancient beast I held and started moving it back and forth underwater to run oxygen through its gills. “There’s no way I’m gonna end its life. Even if there isn’t a mate nearby for it to breed with, I couldn’t in good conscience turn it into a feast after who knows how many centuries of hibernation.”
“Can you imagine? Talk about bad luck. Most of your species dies off, you fall asleep for hundreds, maybe thousands of years, only to wake up and be eaten.” Maria softly squeezed the nape of my neck. “Lucky for you, fishy, my husband is a good bloke.”
“I am a good bloke, aren’t I?”
Ruff! agreed Borks, his tail thwapping back and forth atop the ocean’s surface, flinging salt water every which way.
The fish was much less impressed with my morality. It suddenly thrashed its head to the side, the two venomous barbs on its left gill-plate raking along my forearm.
“Oi! That would have hurt if I wasn’t overpowered!”
It tried to stick me again, this time on the right.
“Okay, you cheeky bastard. You’re clearly fine.” I pushed it away, and the fish weaved off beneath the waves, giving us a glimpse of the sweeping shakes of its head I’d felt through the rod earlier. “You can apologize by making an infinite amount of babies!” I called after it.
“Won’t its babies be able to take out non-cultivators?” Maria asked. “Maybe you shouldn’t tempt fate by asking for a never-ending number of them...”
“You know what? That’s a good point.” I cupped my hands to my mouth. “Scratch that—you can apologize by making a reasonable amount of babies! And don’t expect me to go easy again! Next time, you might be dinner!”
No response came, of course. It was just a fish, magical murder barbs or not.
When we got back to the shore, I took a deep breath, soaking in the present. But now that the flathead was gone, my mind kept returning to those damned System messages and all their implications. I was used to being on the receiving end of errors, but never before had they corrected themselves like that. The System has said: “Inaccuracy limit exceeded.” So the limit for inaccuracies was two? The rarity had changed from Rare to Mythic, and the first sentence of the description had changed from present to past tense.
Was this going to happen more often? Would every fish be ‘rediscovered’ in the coming months? The last two weeks had been wonderfully relaxing, and I’d needed it more than I thought, but maybe it was time to get back to reality. If creatures were reawakening, we’d been granted an opportunity to farm them for experience, just as I’d thought of when first discovering the mudminnows and alligator gar. Was that not what a good leader would do? Ensure his followers were the ones to benefit from the once-off rediscovery of countless species? I—
Ruff!
I blinked, glancing down at Borks. “What?”
He barked again, sitting in the sand, his entire body wagging.
The message his two ruffs conveyed was as clear as it was confusing.
“Present...? You want me to stay present?”
He whined in the negative, then in the affirmative, head darting to the northwest before returning to me, ears alert.
“Mate, I gotta be honest, I don’t really get—”
“The surprise!” Maria interrupted. “It’s a present!”
The canine stood and spun on the spot, whirling with so much vigor that a hole started forming, sand flying in all directions.
“Borks... are you sure? I appreciate it. Really, I do. More than you know. But you don’t have to reveal it early for my sake. There’s no guarantee whatever scheme you and Lemon have cooked up will distract me from—”
He tore a portal in space, unleashed a barrage of licks across both Maria and my hands, then leaped through, his fuzzy little tooshie vanishing form sight. My wife and I shrugged, shared a grin, and followed.
It had been a while since I’d found myself disoriented by teleportation. The feeling was made more bewildering as I glanced up at the thin trunks that towered all around me, their tips sprouting a crown of fronds.
“Borks...” I said. “And Lemon. You both... wow.”
My pals shook with glee, one with the body of a Golden Retriever, the other with an entire grove of palm trees.
I pointed up at the light-green fruits. Or were they seeds? Nuts? I shook my head, centering my thoughts. “Are those what I think they are?”
Lemon answered first. Her voice was usually like a soft breeze through leaves, but with how fast she spoke, she sounded more like a hurricane tearing through a building. “Yes they are master are you happy with them I’m sorry they’re not grown but Borks said now was a good time to let you know and I really just want you to be happy and you too Mistress it’s been so hard to stay away but now that you’re here how has the honeymoon been and how do you like the grove and I hope you’re not mad we used the one fruit you had to make some more!”
“Ruff!” answered Borks at the same time, Lemon managing to say so many words in the span it took him to bark but once.
“Guys...” Maria walked up and rested her hand on the trunk of a fibrous tree. “Fischer is a little stunned right now—” It was true. My mouth was moving inaudibly. “—so let me answer for him. This is amazing. How did you do it from a single seed?”
Lemon was so delighted she made the entire grove swish. “Magic! I approach a breakthrough! And my brother helped me.”
I followed her mental direction, finding the unnamed spirit far below, hoping to remain unnoticed. “Brother...?”
“Yes!”
“Huh. Neat.”
Maria barked a laugh. “That’s all you have to say? They grew a whole forest of something you desperately wanted, and Lemon has started calling our helpful-but-shy tree-spirit friend her brother, meaning there’s a non-zero chance you get to think of another silly name in the near future.”
I knew all of that, of course. It was present in my mind, a great wall of knowledge pressing up against the immovable implications of the System’s earlier messages. They fought for dominion, each teetering, threatening to fall and crush the other.
Lemon snorted—which was damned impressive, given she did so by blowing wind past her various trunks. “Do not be silly, Mistress. My brother’s name is also Lemon.”
And just like that, the great wall of knowledge won, the apparent fact that there were now two Lieutenant Colonel Lemony Thickets enough to sway the tides of battle. It tickled me pink.
I strode forward, scooped up Borks and Maria, then wrapped one of Lemon’s trunks in a hug. “Thank you, Borks. Thank you, Lemon. And you too, second Lemon.”
All but the latter returned my embrace, Maria with her arms, Lemon with a thick root grown from beneath us, and Borks... okay, he didn’t so much hug me as he did wiggle around as a very-licky Dachshund, but the intent was the same.
When I finally let them go, I stepped back and gazed up at the canopy, its fronds painted with the red and orange hues of sunset. “This is exactly what I needed to see.” I reached out and squeezed Maria’s hand. “You were right. Let’s extend the honeymoon as long as we can.”
She played it cool, by which I mean she only danced and pumped her fists a little.
Another two weeks passed by in bliss. Our friends sporadically showed up alone or a few at a time, joining us for feasts, delivering coffees and sweet treats, or just rocking up for a yarn. The only ones I didn’t see were Snips, Cal, and Fathom. Cinnamon and the pelicans came sparsely, my martial bunny having taken up patrolling the skies atop Pelly and Bill. Claws visited even less, only materializing when food was involved—or mischief to be had, according to Barry and the endless piles of sand he kept finding.
If left to our own devices, Maria and I might have continued living that leisurely life indefinitely. The tunnels below filled more with each passing day, easing the nagging voice that worried about some impending attack. As soon as they were full, I’d have full control of my chi again—along with four partitions with which to exert my will on the world.
Unfortunately, it couldn’t last forever. And, as was often the case, everything seemed to happen at once.