Ar'Kendrithyst

Chapter 157, 1/2

The first night of his tenure as clanfriend had gone… not so well, Erick thought as he laid in bed, unable to sleep.

Dinner had been a large, whole clan affair, with most everyone dipping out of the same cauldron, and taking rice from the same large pots. A few people cooked their own meals elsewhere, and ate elsewhere, but most of the clan ate together, with more than a few families pulling their yurts around to form a loose ring around the cooking yurt. Poi was even able to help cook, though he was kicked out rather quickly for reasons Erick wasn’t quite sure of.

Erick and his people ate their meals at a corner table, while everyone else stayed away. The few times he had gone to talk to people or tried to be friendly, he had gotten stonewalled with silence, or polite nothing answers. The people of Clan Pale Cow were polite about their refusal to interact with him, but they did refuse; there was no doubt about that.

To be fair, Erick had made a mistake in the beginning of the night. Ophiel had been out on patrol, and he pinged Erick that he saw some monsters. A quick check showed that, yes, those were monsters. Lizards, five of them and each as large as two cows put together. They were still about five kilometers away, but they were headed this way from the south, and they were downwind of the spread out caravan and all the cows.

And so, Ophiel [Luminous Beam]ed them, lighting up the southern horizon with a quick squiggle of brightness.

It wasn’t halfway through the brightness on the horizon that the entire caravan rapidly caught on that something was happening down south. Conversation faltered.

Erick spoke up, trying to calm them all by saying, “It’s just some lizards. They’re gone now.”

And thus, the shunning, which was already rather bad, was cemented, and no one wanted to talk to Erick except to excuse themselves to go elsewhere. Erick had been meaning to talk with Yorila and Amasar, but after his display of power, those two didn’t want anything to do with him, for now.

The next time Ophiel found some monsters Erick had them use [Flying Striker]s, conjuring up about five flying swords per Ophiel. Spinning blades of Force were a much less visible display of magic, especially when it was done five kilometers out from camp—

Laying in bed, trying not to think about the shunning, and mostly succeeding, Erick got another ping from Ophiel. Monsters.

Erick checked on what Ophiel had found, and discovered rats of unusual size. The main one was rather large. It was five meters fat from fangs to butt, with three more body lengths of tail beyond that. The smaller rats all around it were only the size of small cows. And… Yup! Cores in the body, near the heart. They were all monsters. Despite the size of the main rat, it was still just a normal monster; no grand rad there.

Ophiel made quick work of the monster rats, mulching them beyond most casual attempts at identifying the bodies, and then [Cleanse]ing the remains away.

It wasn’t the first time Ophiel had interrupted Erick’s attempt at sleep. Perhaps that was more of a reason why he could not rest. There were monsters out there, and Erick wasn’t comfortable with the power of the guardians on duty. He had seen them work, of course, and Clan Pale Cow had survived all this time without Erick’s intervention, but there were no walls around the clan, and that set him a bit on edge. It was an irrational fear, for sure, but it was still a fear.

Erick wasn’t actually ‘on guardian duty’ right now, either. He was just killing monsters because they kept him awake. He might have been on duty, but he had never managed to talk with the woman in charge of putting people on guardian duty. At dinner, Forage Leader Ibahka had taken her dinner and rushed away, into her yurt, shunning everyone except for the few people who went with her.

Erick would need to seek her out tomorrow and claim an actual assignment.

But, for now, Erick was on duty ‘whenever he felt like it’, according to Niyazo.

And so, for now…

He laid in bed, on the bottom floor of his [Obscuring Redoubt], still awake.

The Redoubt was a pretty nice spell. The first floor was invisible to outsiders, while the basement was well defended with nice, thick doors between the exterior and the sleeping area. The walls of the place were dense stone, without a speck of stray dirt anywhere. Erick had thrown some thin lightwards along every upper edge of every room, giving a diffuse glow to the entire interior, while the lights in the bedrooms were much dimmer, but still allowed visibility.

In the original casting of the spell the Redoubt had enough rooms to hold ten people, but Erick had Shaped this one to only have three rooms. Two common rooms, and one bathroom. There was no running water and [Cleanse] was the only way to get clean around here, of course, but a separate room was nice to have, just for the privacy of the space. That smaller room was basically just a hole in the ground, though.

The bedrooms were spacious, but [Obscuring Redoubt] didn’t come with furniture. So Erick, like everyone else, was using [Conjure Item] in order to make themselves a bed and covers and everything else they needed to get a good night’s rest.

As Erick’s mana sense wandered, he saw that one of their party was not used to this kind of sleeping arrangement.

Nirzir slept lightly in the other room, but then she turned over a bit too fast and her conjured bed popped underneath her, returning to the manasphere as sparkles of violet light. Nirzir yelped for a fraction of a second before she landed on her spread-out extra set of clothes.

It was the second time that had happened, which was the reason for the clothes spread out under her conjured bed.

Nirzir cursed softly and then. Just lying there, she accepted her fate. For three more minutes she tried to fall asleep, but it wasn’t working. The young girl rolled over to stare at ceiling as tears—

Okay! None of that, now. Erick got up off of his own bed and then he stepped around the wall that separated his and Poi’s room from the girls’ room.

“Hey,” Erick whispered, trying not to wake the others. “Let me make a bed for you.”

Nirzir froze on the floor. Then she raised her head and looked past her feet, to see Erick standing a few meters away. Before, she had insisted on making her own bed. But now... Her lips pulled down and she scrunched her face hard as she could, but she did not cry; she would not let herself. She just nodded.

Erick gestured for her to get up.

Nirzir did so, rolling out of the way.

[Conjure Item] was a funny spell. The resulting item always had 50 ‘Health’, and the harder an item was, the easier it was for it to suffer damage, but if you made a really soft item, then it could suffer catastrophic damage with as little as a gentle poke. The secret to making a sturdy conjured item was to make an item that could deform and not care about being deformed, because it would always spring back. The standard [Conjure Item] bed was made with this working in mind. It was a 500 mana spell of a hundred thousand smaller parts all contained in a wrapping of hard cloth; a chicken down bed, with feathers that could crush, but were slightly curved so that they could spring back. Theoretically.

Most people failed at properly making a bed. The down feathers would crush and then break. The outer covering could tear. The standard ‘Adventuring Bed’ was a work of a thousand failure points.

Some people tried gel-based bedding. The most popular one of that was a working that involved Elemental Ooze and [Force Platform], to make a bouncy, floating bed. That sort of working was much more resilient than a standard bed, but since [Force Platform] lasted 100 minutes, baseline, most people weren’t able to make one of those that lasted long enough to provide actual, good sleep. And besides that, most people did not like ‘ooze beds’.

But if one was born on Earth, and if one had gone through years of trying to find a nice bed that allowed one to recapture some of the easy sleep they used to have when they were younger, one might remember a bit about polyurethane, and memory foam. Past that, Intelligence helped to fill in a lot of gaps.

And so, Erick cast a spell, imagining that he was conjuring polymer chains in an open matrix, which let in air, and which never truly broke. It was a variation of chicken-down bouncing-back structure, but done in a much more high-tech way. It also worked rather well, as Erick’s own bed could attest to.

A white rectangular prism of foam flopped out of the air, on top of Nirzir’s extra clothes. A second casting conjured up a pillow of the same stuff, while a third and fourth casting conjured up a pair of blankets, with one to lay on, and one to lay under. The blankets would mitigate some of the damage the other items would incur through casual sleeping use, but they were also a major failing point, as most soft things were.

Erick was still rather proud of those blankets, though. They were modeled after the mist rabbit fur blanket that he had gotten for Jane, from Arbor O’kabil, but with a bit of polyester ideas thrown in to give them some strength. Erick was using the same setup in his own conjured bed, and it felt great.

Erick conjured up a second set to the side of the room, whispering, “In case the first one fails.”

Nirzir was still sitting on the floor, seemingly not able to touch the bed he had conjured, but at his words she put a hand on the fabrics, feeling their softness. Her face lit up with a wordless thanks as she dried her tears with one hand and pushed her other hand into the fabric, and into the foam bed below. It was like touching a solid cloud, and Erick could tell she liked it.

Erick whispered, “I like this kind of bed, but Poi and Teressa don’t. Let me know if you don’t like it tomorrow, but for now, it’s good enough to sleep on. Good night.”

With a tiny smile and averting her eyes, Nirzir whispered, “Thank you.”

Erick went back to his room.

Nirzir climbed into her bed.

Ophiel informed Erick of more monsters, this time to the west. More rats, but smaller; the size of dogs.

And so, Ophiel tumbled through the air, slashing his swords this way and that, ending the threat before it got anywhere near the cows, or the caravan.

With all these threats ended, Erick tried to sleep…

But it wasn’t working. Nirzir had managed to fall into slumber in her new bed, finally sleeping the sleep of the dead. Even when Teressa’s bed popped and the woman slammed into the ground with a heavy crunch, and Jane laughed, only to find her own bed popped in a mysterious coincidence seconds later, Nirzir slept.

And.

Yeah.

This wasn’t working for him.

So Erick sent Ophiel out, far away from the caravan, and had him cast an Imaging into the sky, targeting every single small core within 100 kilometers. Then Ophiel killed those monsters. Then, Ophiel targeted every medium core. Erick got a lot more hits this time, since the medium cores were normal-sized cores. After Ophiel killed those monsters, Erick targeted grand cores, and found three in the area. All three belonged to giant underground plants, each of which laid at the bottom of a large hole of their own making. The top of the hole was covered up by mucus and dirt, but anything could fall through those holes, to fall into the vats of acid that belonged to the plant below. A few of them had cow bones in their gullets, but no people bones.

Erick killed those plants with a heavy dose of [Luminous Beam]s.

According to their kill notifications they were called Abyss Drinkers.

By the time Erick had finished it was three in the morning. He had also spotted no less than three other caravans within a hundred kilometers, each defending themselves from the predations of those who hunt in the dark.

And with all those monsters now dead, Erick felt safe enough to sleep.

- - - -

The day dawned, and Erick did not wake till hours later, when the smell of coffee and streams of sunlight invaded the darkened sleeping space underground. As he got up, Erick took quick stock of the space. Everyone else was already awake and gone from the bottom floor, their beds dispersed and their stuff picked up and taken upstairs. Nirzir’s bed was still there, though, along with her extra one; she hadn’t burst the one Erick had made. He hoped she liked it.

Erick’s daily routine was much shorter when he was out camping. He just got up, went to the bathroom while Ophiel hung out with Yggdrasil’s eye outside of the closed room, and then he [Cleanse]d himself, all the while recasting his daily spellwork.

By the time he got upstairs he was feeling good, but it was a shame there were no showers out here. There had barely been any showers in Songli, either. That was just the culture, for you.

Poi sat by a table, sipping coffee and talking to other people through [Telepathy]; Erick guessed twelve people, based on the number of tendrils coming off of his head.

It had to be at least ten in the morning. Everyone else must have been awake, and Poi was actually drinking water. The smell of coffee in the air was coming from a pot of the stuff that Poi had likely just made, perhaps in order to wake him.

“You are correct,” Poi said, smiling to himself.

Erick asked, “So where is everyone else?”

“Jane is out learning how to wrangle cows from cowback, with Amasar and the other cowherds teaching her what she needs to know. Nirzir is learning to cook at the kitchens. Teressa is a guest speaker at the children’s yurt, telling them of monsters the world over. Breakfast was great. Lots of interesting conversations, too.” Poi gave Erick a look. “Everyone on guardian duty was talking about how few monsters tried to attack, while every old hand was talking about the dangers of complacency. A few quiet people even floated the idea that you might have had something to do with that.”

Erick smiled innocently, saying, “I only killed a few hundred monsters. Besides! What did they expect me to do? Leave the threats alone?”

“Niyazo spoke of how you were on guardian duty, when you felt like it. A lot of people then decided that you must have felt like it.”

“… And what did they say to that?”

“They don’t like being coddled.”

“Ah. Well. I can see that.” Erick grabbed himself some coffee and poured in some milk, saying, “Thanks for the coffee.”

“You’re welcome.”

Erick shifted half his sight toward Ophiel, looking around as he asked, “So how was your reception at breakfast? Better than last night?” He asked, “You did go to breakfast with everyone, didn’t you?”

“Jane and Nirzir went and got it, to bring it back while you were sleeping.” Poi began, “They told me that everyone seemed a lot nicer, and that...”

- - - -

With knife in hand, Nirzir Void Song stood over the corpse of her enemy and stared down at her own defeat.

She cried a little.

Waveni, her current instructor on the ‘fine art’ of cooking, also stood over the corpse of Nirzir’s defeated enemy. The older woman frowned at the mangled onion. Then the old woman laughed, loud and boisterous, and said, “Looks like you ain’t never done this before, girlie!”

“I’ve chopped an onion before!” Once. Literally once before. “But this was different.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve, saying, “And it never made me cry so much. I swear, I can do this.”

Waveni and several other nearby cooks laughed at that.

After breakfast, which had been so much better than the stew— The stew was good! But Nirzir knew she would be eating that stew a lot, and she did not look forward to that.— Nirzir had inquired after learning to cook, from the cooks themselves. Waveni had taken an instant liking to Nirzir for her desire to help, and so, here Nirzir was, in the kitchens between mealtimes, learning how to make the stew that she was already dreading. And she was failing at this very first step. Chopping onions shouldn’t be this hard!

A little while ago, Waveni had shown Nirzir how to chop up an onion, properly, and then told Nirzir to try. The old Cook’s onion was perfectly minced to pieces no bigger than her pinky fingernail. Nirzir’s onion was chopped unevenly, with each piece varying from thumb sized to fingernail-clipping sized.

Waveni chuckled and glanced to the mountain of onions left to chop, sitting in a large stone bowl to the side. There had to be a thousand onions there! And then she laughed louder when she looked to the empty stone bowl that was meant to hold the final chopped product. Nirzir stood in between the bowls, with her own table, and her own cutting board, and her own problems.

“My oh my! You have a task, if’n I do say so.” Waveni smiled wide, saying, “You’ll learn eventually. Just try not to cut yourself. I got faith in you, girlie, so go on, and keep chopping!”

Nirzir Void Song knew of the philosophy about cooking. She knew the recipes to some of her favorite foods. She understood the ideas behind feeding a hundred people from the same pot. But what she didn’t understand was the idea of not using magic to chop, or to mix, or to do anything except for heating, and even that was kept to a minimum. Mostly, they burned wood to heat their ovens, but Nirzir could tell there was magic in those metal boxes, stirring the air, or something.

And so, with knife in hand, and knowing that even if she slipped, the knife they had given her was very much not sharp enough to actually injure her, Nirzir said, “I can do this.”

Waveni smiled, then swiped off the mangled remains of Nirzir’s onion into the final product bowl, saying, “It don’t gotta be perfect on your first try, but I expect near enough to perfect by the thousandth onion. Just remember, you gotta chop off the roots and the head and take off the outermost skin, too. Can’t be getting that trash into the stew.” She walked away, saying, “Keep at it!” And then she gestured at another mountain of vegetables, saying, “And then you can move onto the white root!”

Nirzir paled a little. She cried a little. She told herself it was mostly the onions.

A crazy question struck her in that moment: Why would anyone create vegetables that made you cry when you cut them! Some sadist archmage, no doubt. Erick wouldn’t make something like this, for sure!

That, and many other questions filled Nirzir’s mind as she proceeded to learn how to handle a knife. It was much more difficult than learning how to handle a [Flying Sword] spell. She had skill with magic! She had no skill with this… this mundane shit!

… But she would learn, dammit. She would learn.

Apparently, Erick liked cooking—

And let’s just ignore those slippery, flighty feelings. Think instead about how living a life without magic could lead one to more power than any other public archmage to ever come before! (Except for the Headmaster; he didn’t count in this scenario.) Erick had flown to the top of the world, to become a dominant power. And he built his entire base on the basic building blocks of this New Cosmology. He spent his entire life doing things the mundane way, listening to the world around him, and paying attention to the details. And if that was all it took to become an archmage, then others would have come first, and so, there was something special about that man.

Maybe there was merit to the mundane, beyond the obvious.

Or maybe it was just as simple as what everyone in her family had said: Once you learn about the mundane, then you can learn how to make magic influence the mundane, and end up with massive multipliers larger than ever before. It was all about forming the spell just exactly right, like drawing a perfect circle with a sweep of the hand, or telling a person the exact right thing they needed to hear, or parrying a sword with your own and then counter attacking…

It was about holding the knife, just right, to inflict the maximum amount of change, using the least amount of power, so that when you did use all of your power, the stroke of the knife would be massive.

But maybe the truth of Erick’s power was more how Nirzir imagined it to be. Maybe there was something more important than mundanity. Maybe, the most important thing was about doing the right thing, at the right time. Maybe, the best magic came about from connecting with others, and from not retreating from the world.

All magic came from everyone, after all, so therefore it made sense that it was easier to connect to magic when you connected to others. Maybe, the truth of it all was that mana liked connections. You never heard about archmages past when they make their grandest magics, or after they set themselves up for life with their small deeds done out of sight. (Again, the Headmaster did not count.) Erick was obviously just getting started with his grand deeds, and everything he did was more impressive than the month before.

And it was very nice when he came into her room last night and made her a bed just like his—

Nope.

Put those thoughts away, Nirzir. Remember what Poi said.

She cleared her mind. She focused.

And so, Nirzir chopped onions, slipping every so often, but learning how to hold the knife better each chop. If it wasn’t for her spellwork she would have lost thumbs and fingertips, many times over.

Waveni came by after Nirzir had gotten through twenty onions, and saw that Nirzir was having trouble. “I know you ain’t used to this life, but I see you trying, and I like that.” She glanced around, and noticing no one nearby, leaned in and whispered, “You can use magic if you keep it small. I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Nirzir felt a great appreciation for the older woman in that moment. She said, “Thank you, but I want to do it correctly, and that means no magic.”

Waveni broke into a wide, happy smile, followed by a laugh. “Good for you! We’ll make a Cook out of you, yet! How many levels you got, girlie? You need it, I can get the guardians to get you in on some monster kills.”

Nirzir felt even more appreciation for the woman. All of Clan Pale Cow seemed to be a lot more welcoming than she had expected.

But she couldn’t take that offer. Nirzir said, “Thank you, but my brothers took me out for some monster kills almost a year ago. I’m already Classed.”

“Well you just work on them onions, then.” Waveni said, “We want to have the ingredients in the cauldron before we hitch up the cows and get traveling again. I reckon we gots about three hours before that happens.”

Nirzir nodded—

She readily asked, “Do you eat things other than stew? I liked the fried bread this morning!”

“Oh my yes!” Waveni laughed, and the other nearby Cooks joined her. “We eat more than stew. We even had rice last night, though I prefer it the way I make it— nothing against your man, though. What’s his name? Poi?”

“Yes; that’s his name.” Nirzir did not say how every meal should have good rice, and that rice didn’t count as ‘other things’, and that the way Pale Cow made rice was an abomination. Seriously! Who boils rice in a bucket and calls that ‘rice’! But Nirzir held her tongue.

Waveni smiled, saying, “We make everything you’ve ever had! Dumplings, pies, pastas—”

An older man exclaimed, “Curries and steamed rice! The boiled stuff can’t compare!”

Waveni turned on the man. “You cook rice your way when I’m dust, and not a moment sooner! You understand me, Jorn?”

Jorn just laughed, and he wasn’t the only one.

Another older woman called out, “You better be grilling up some vegetables we [Grow] at the next riverside, Waveni! I ain’t [Grow]ing you no more onions, lest you do!” She added, “And you best not be grilling me onions and calling it done!”

“You quit complaining, too.” Waveni told the woman, “Onions are a perfect food! Fills you up and goes with everything. You like them too.”

“I just want my grilled squash, you hear.”

“Aye! I hear you.”

And then a different cook spoke up about grilled meat, and how grilled vegetables were terrible, but the other older woman wasn’t having it, which then cascaded into everyone speaking about their favorite foods.

Waveni smirked, and while everyone else spoke of specific dishes, she said, “We’ll have all of those harder-to-make meals when we get to Ooloraptoor and settle to a single place for a while, but when we’re traveling, stew is what we eat. Gotta have a well balanced dish for when people get injured fighting the monsters, because healing takes a toll, and having a good hearty stew is necessary.”

“Oh. Right.” Nirzir said, “That makes sense.” And then she decided to take a chance, mostly because Waveni had said that she could use magic if it was easier, so therefore, Waveni probably didn’t mind magic that much. Nirzir just had to keep it small and quiet. Nirzir whispered, “If people need healing I can help. I have those spells.”

Every nearby person went quiet for a few moments in the wake of Nirzir’s words.

Waveni flinched, hard, and then she tried to pass it off as though she hadn’t, by saying, “Don’t worry none about that. Just chop chop chop like you do. We’ll make a Cook out of you yet!”

Nirzir knew she wasn’t the most socially adroit person, but even she knew that she had fucked up.

Ah. Oh well.

… Eventually, conversations started up again, though now, Nirzir had her mana sense active. She might not have the range and ability with that skill that some people possessed, but she certainly noticed that the people around her watched her like she was going to poison their food, or something. She definitely noticed the tiny [Cleanse]s that were cast on the onions when they were taken away to the big cauldron, too.

Well wasn’t that a bit disappointing?

But… Then again, what did she expect? These people were nice and welcoming, but they were insular, too. They were humoring Erick and his entourage by allowing them to help out around here, all to keep up appearances, to allow Clan Pale Cow to dominate their ‘debates’. They were just using Erick for his power, weren’t they?

Nirzir felt a bit angry at that. These people were just as illusion-faced as everyone back at home. This was exactly the shit she was trying to get away from. This was the shit that made her want to crawl into a hole and never come out. She had tried not to let her anger show and she was mostly successful, for as onions came apart under her clumsy cuts, some of the tears rolling down her face were tears of quiet anger. Nirzir was pretty sure that it was hard for other people to tell the difference.

- - - -

Jane loved horses.

A corollary to that love, was the unicorn. There was a part of Jane that was very, very excited that she could transform into one of those mythical beasts, but she kept that part of herself on lockdown for a dozen different reasons. Only a few of those reasons had to do with what unicorns had been on Earth, but those reasons were ingrained in Jane, and thus, she could not rid herself of them.

And NO, she did not like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Of course, she had seen several of the episodes… Okay! She saw every single episode! She loved that damn show! But too many weirdos liked that show, too. Some of the people she met in college who watched that show were perfectly fine, but the others were not. Horses were not a sex thing for Jane. She just liked the idea of escaping the world on horseback. Of shootouts with the Law. Of wind flowing through her hair.

But since there were no horses on Veird, and since spiders were pretty damn cool (and much more versatile), Jane was more than happy with her spider-heavy Familiar Form catalogue.

And besides that, unicorns were a bit different on Veird than they were thought of on Earth.

On Veird, unicorns were horrible eaters of children and enslavers of minds. There was absolutely nothing good about them except for all of their innate abilities. [Aura of Freedom] was magnificent, and always usable outside of the unicorn form. [Light Sculptor] and [Beautification Aura] required a horn to be incorporated into the body, but that was easy enough, and rather innocuous, if you did it right.

And in lesser ways, ‘unicorns’ were not actually ‘unicorns’, at all, for they had absolutely no relationship to horses at all. Fun fact! Veird unicorns were actually an offshoot of the cow, mutated into a powerful, lithe form, and then imbued with Light. Horses didn’t exist on Veird. Everything that was a horse was simply an offshoot of the cow. The unicorn’s actual name was ‘orolos’, which meant ‘cow of devouring light’, but translation being what it was, and since orolos looked very much like unicorns, ‘orolos’ were ‘unicorns’ for all intents and purposes.

Jane didn’t really care for cows, but they were as close as Veird got to horses, and they were cute, in their own ways.

She could never see herself as a [Cow Polymage], though, and for multiple reasons. The main reason was that cows were a prey species. Most variants never survived outside of the herd, and herds were usually overseen by people, and the people didn’t want cows rising up and killing their caretakers. There was a vicious cycle of breeding going on there. But even the baseline cows were not that great. Cows had limited range of movement, and they were slow. A herd could not defend itself from outside threats, which was why guarding the cows was just as important as guarding the caravan.

Only the Shade, Hollowsaur, made monstrous cows, but even his cows weren’t viable in the larger world. The only monstrous species of cow that ever survived to become a true breed of ‘monster cow’, were the unicorns, and that was only because of [Aura of Freedom], which prevented capture, and [Beautification Aura], which prevented anyone from being able to see or realize that the cow was in their presence.

This was not for the world’s lack of trying to breed better, different cows, though. As Jane got to know the herd of Clan Pale Cow, she realized that there were a lot more cows out there than she ever guessed possible.

Jane walked alongside Amasar and a few other cowherds, on the northern flank of the herd. The cows mooed, calling out with happy sounds, while young ones played amongst the crowd, tousling each other with their nubby horns. The wind whistled through the grasses, and the chilly air smelled of cow. It was not a bad smell, but it wasn’t a great smell, either. It was certainly not the smell of horses.

Cows were cute, though, so Jane could be a cowherd for a while. This might be fun!

Amasar pointed to a yellowish cow that was dappled with orange. “What is that one?”

Jane had gone through orientation for the last hour, which mostly involved Amasar talking about cows and telling Jane about the breeds they raised. Amasar had already told Jane that she probably wouldn’t be able to ride today, and for not a week more, at least, but they were here, and Jane was ready to ride if the opportunity presented itself. Perhaps proving herself as a good listener would be enough to let her get on a cow, with everyone else.

Jane answered, “A dappled cow; one of the milkers. Great for cheese. Runs from a fight. Minor air control powers. Needs to be defended.”

Amasar nodded once, then pointed to a light brown cow with short horns.

Jane answered, “A possible breeding bull, but too young to challenge the reigning patriarch. Don’t protect him from the reigning bull. Defend from all other threats, like all the other cows. Possible stone powers, so probably not a good breeding bull, anyway.”

“Correct. Good assessment, too.” Amasar pointed to the young pair of male cows, butting heads. Both of them were blonde.

“Immature bulls.” Jane said, “Protect from the main bull, but not too vigorously. Air aligned, so good breeding stock.”

“Correct.” Amasar asked, “What must we do if monsters attack?”

“If it is a small incursion, allow the herd to be bloodied. Allow the herd the chance to defend themselves, first.” Jane said, “But any monster the size of a cow must be rebuffed, hard and fast.”

“And why do we do it this way?”

“Because the herd is an organism that must be cultivated, but to defend them from all danger is to make them complacent, and when the monsters do show up, some will die, for sometimes the monsters are too fast. The cows will die if they don’t understand that they are always under threat from monsters.”

Jane almost wanted to add, ‘And isn’t that a poignant message against integration if I ever heard one’. But she did not, for these people were not here to hear her opinions on politics, and she was not here to give them. She just wanted to get on top of a cow and feel the wind in her hair as they rode off into the sunset, or at least raced a good kilometer upon the open plains.

But from what she was seeing, Pale Cow’s cows were more of a ‘barely mobile food storage system’, than ‘powerhouses on four legs’. Which was pretty much on point for ‘what is a cow’, so Jane only had herself to blame for that unrealistic outlook on what guarding the cows would mean.

Amasar nodded. “Correct. Let us test to see if you are good on cowback, and when we ride north, you will ride with us.”

Jane’s heart skipped a beat, but she calmly said, “Ah? I’ll be able to ride today?” She glanced to the other cowherds in the group. Other people were surprised with Amasar’s announcement, too. Jane turned back. “I was under the impression that I could not.”

One of the other cowherds, Iroki, said, “It is one year of learning and caring for the herd and then another year of learning how to fight as a group with the rest of us before anyone is allowed to ride in front of the clan. We are the spear, Amasar.” He glanced to Jane, then back to Amasar, saying, “She can tend to the milking and the cheese yurt like everyone else at her level.”

“I’m fine with learning how to make cheese.” Jane said, “I love cheese.”

Amasar said, “I am the herd leader. I enforce the rules. Jane will ride out front, with us, and let no one countermand my order.”

Iroki frowned, then said, “It will be as you say.” He looked to Jane, then disregarded her.

The other cowherds were similarly miffed as Iroki, but none of them said a single word.

Amasar ignored the brewing discontent in his midst, and turned to the herd. “We call out to our mounts and they respond as they are wont. If a cow responds to you, you will learn to ride. If not, you will not. The caravan departs in two hours.”

And then he whistled to the herd, a long, shrill sound that he split into warbles. The call carried on the wind, into the mass of cows. The animals perked up. Some of them disregarded the whistle, moving away from the cowherds, but others raised their heads above the crowd, and bleated into the air. Those ones moved forward.

Those ones to first respond were also the closest ones to Amasar and the group, for they had been quietly trailing Amasar and the other cowherds this whole time. They wanted a ride, and they knew where to be to get it.

Amasar explained, “Cows are smart. They take a bit of training in the beginning, but the ones who want to ride will come forward, and the ones who do not will go away. We do not name them, for that is bad luck. Do not name the cow who comes to you, if such a miracle occurs. All outsiders do that, and we cannot allow this.” He stepped away from the other cowherds while holding out a hand toward the approaching cows. He clicked his tongue and two of the cows rushed toward him, with a light blonde one winning out over the light brown one. The light brown one went to the other nearest person, who happened to be Iroki. Amasar petted the one who came to him, while speaking to Jane, “Accept the one that approaches, like this—” He scratched the chin and face of the animal, moving his hands to the side, scratching the neck, as he, too, moved to the cow’s side. He reached the middle of the animal, and then hopped on, carefully easing his weight down onto the animal’s back. He bunched his hand in the ruff of blonde fur on the cow’s neck. “And that is all there is to it. We train them all from birth to—” The cow under him mooed lightly and began to amble, but Amasar clenched his hand, and his legs, and the cow stopped. He admonished the animal, saying, “We train most of them well enough.”

Jane was entranced. She watched as riders took their mounts, and as more and more cows ambled out of the herd, hurrying, as if realizing that there wouldn’t be enough riders for them if they didn’t rush forward and claim a person.

Except none of them came for Jane. Well. One did, but the cow sniffed at her and then turned away. Within minutes, every cowherd was atop a cow, and all the other cows were already walking away; miffed that they didn’t get a rider.

Jane felt a tension in her chest that she hadn’t felt in a long time. It was a sickly sort of feeling. A small feeling. A feeling of minimization. Ah, yeah. She was crushed. How silly was that? She was sad that the cows didn’t like her? Well of course they didn’t—

Jane said, “Ah. This is why you must work with the cows for a year before riding, isn’t it?”

Amasar frowned a little, as he confirmed her theory, saying, “I had hoped that they would just accept you, but they have not. My apologies, Jane.”

Iroki looked vindicated, sitting there atop his own cow, but his voice was not smug, as he said, “I work in the cheese yurt every morning. You will need to wake up earlier in order to participate in the milking, to get to know the cows. As you learn of the cows, they will learn of you.”

Amasar said, “You may head back to the caravan. We have rounds to do before we leave. Find some stragglers and bring them back.”

Jane turned and bowed to Amasar, saying, “Thank you for your instruction.”

And then she turned and walked back the way they had come.

Amasar, Iroki, and the others, tapped their cows, and the cows responded with crashing hooves that ripped up the grassland, and propelled them forward. The wind raced through their hair as the cows let loose their power.

They moved a lot faster than Jane had expected them to move.

And Jane was just a milkmaid.

… On the way back to the herd, Jane realized that it was all kinda funny, actually. She knew she was more than a milkmaid. She was so very, very much more than that. But sure! She could milk some cows! She had expected to do that, anyway. She could even learn how to make some cheese. She had never done that before. It might be fun! If nothing else, it was another skill to add to her resume, not that anyone used those here on Veird. Heh.

Jane giggled to herself, while cows mooed all around her—

Oh. Wait.

Did Amasar do that on purpose? Did he try to make himself look like he was doing well by her, and then, by extension, doing well by her father? But then again… He did say that he knew the cows would not go to her, but that he would try anyway.

Jane was probably seeing shadows where there were none.

Their first night in the caravan had been rather welcoming, but it had been a rote welcome. No one wanted Erick or any of them there, but Clan Pale Cow was more than willing to be neighborly. The problem was that Clan Pale Cow, like most other grass traveler clans, simply did not approve of the open use of magic.

But Jane was a Polymage, and her father was an archmage.

So a bit of cultural dissonance was to be expected! But they were traveling the world right now. This much was fine, and besides that, Clan Pale Cow was doing their very best to be welcoming. Jane could only do her best, too.

- - - -

Teressa felt strange to be here. How did she even get into this scenario? They were going after dragons, but now Erick was trying to be a part of a grass traveler clan? And sure, Teressa understood the connection that Erick was trying to exploit, to force the dragons out into the open, but still…

This was weird, wasn’t it?

It all felt so… surreal.

The Worldly Path was involved, for sure, but still…

Teressa suddenly realized, halfway through her talk, that she barely understood how she had gotten to this place, and thus she stopped talking.

Life was weird, sometimes.

Weird, and kinda wonderful.

The smallest child of the group asked, “What’s a Moon Reacher!”

Teressa came back to the moment, surrounded by twelve kids, each of them looking up to her like she was a strangeness that they could not wrap their heads around. Part of their attention was locked to her because of the Blessing of Aloethag, but Teressa had mitigated much of that by wearing a veil. Most of their attention was, thankfully, focused on the lesson that Teressa was trying to give, but Teressa had lost the thread of her focus as the unreality of the moment finally hit home.

She played off her momentary lapse, pitching her voice low and full of terror, as she spread her arms wide, and said, “I lost myself for a moment there, children. Maybe there was a moon reacher nearby.” Some of the children recoiled a little at that. Some of them just went wide-eyed, and even more attentive. “Those monsters are some of the Darkest evils in the world, though you would never know it to look at them. With their long, bendy arms and tiny hands, they rise above it all, and cloud your mind as they reach down as though from the moons, to pluck at your flesh and your thoughts.” She used one hand to mime the plucking of her own fingers, folding the finger down after she ‘plucked’ it. “Pulling and ripping off limbs, laughing at you from up above, you will never know what killed you and your entire party unless you are trained to exacting detail. It is the small things that let you know that you are under attack.” By now, she had folded over all the fingers of one hand. “If they plucked off my fingers like this, I would think that I had lived my whole life without those fingers. But here is the detail: I would know something was wrong, because I used my sword in this hand, but how could I hold a sword if I had no fingers? It is this detail that alerts me to the wrongness of the moment; that there might be a moon reacher exuding their [Thought Fog] all over the place.”

The kids were absolutely entranced. Some would probably have nightmares, but nightmares were better than death; one needed to know of the Darkness if they were to overcome it.

Their teacher, an older man by the name of Vorilo, held great disapproval in his eyes as he sat there in the back of the room, watching over Teressa’s lesson on monsters of the world. But he didn’t say anything; he knew this was going to be a difficult lesson. Talking about monsters always was. The two of them, along with Clan Leader Niyazo, had talked earlier about what Teressa was going to say to the kids, to fulfill her obligation to support the clan while she lived with them.

Teressa opened her hand, showing her fingers as still there. Some of the kids gasped, and Teressa had to fight off a smile because it would throw her off her tale, no matter if the kids couldn’t actually see her smile through her veil.

Kids were so easy to entertain.

Teressa said, “Depending on how I was positioned in a group, I would have two responses. If I was here, with my boss, Archmage Flatt, and we were to encounter some Moon Reachers, then we would slay them all. Aside from all our other defenses, Ophiel has no mind with which to Fog, and so, we would know the problem even if all the rest of us could not see the problem.”

Vorilo cringed.

The kids loved the idea of fighting the moon reachers, of killing the problem. Some of them even started slashing the air with imaginary swords. But this was not the correct solution for the vast, vast majority of people. Teressa needed to adjust what she had said.

And so, she continued, “—But looking to slay moon reachers is not the proper response for anyone who is not prepared for them. The best solution is to run away, to live to fight another day. This is always the correct solution when you are under attack from an assailant you cannot comprehend.”

The kids did not like this. Some even voiced their displeasure with ‘But why!’ and ‘I’m never running from a fight!’.

Vorilo relaxed a bit, but he was still on edge.

With a relaxed, yet directed tone, Teressa singled out the kid who spoke of never running. “Boy.” The boy instantly looked to her and his eyes went wide, for Teressa was purposefully glowing her eyes with grey light. The effect wasn’t much, but it would be visible through her veil for at least this single child. “Know your limits before you encounter the unknown. Know when to run, and make sure everyone else also knows when to run.” The boy just stared, going weak in the bladder a bit, but otherwise doing okay. A bit of terror now is worth a lot of saved blood later. Teressa relaxed her eyes, and turned her face back toward the whole group, saying, “Learn how to fight and how to live while you are safe, and surrounded by loved ones. Don’t make other people sad because you lost your life fighting what you knew you should not fight.”

Vorilo nodded, but remained silent.

And then Teressa went off script, a bit, “Until a year ago, I thought I knew everything there was to know about fighting. I was a tank, protecting Spur in the army, holding the front lines against Ar’Kendrithyst and the Shades—”

Vorilo paled at the mention of the world’s oldest enemies. All of the kids were stock still, watching Teressa speak of Evils, and likely feeling rather odd about it. Their own parents never spoke of these things. Most of the world never spoke of Ar’Kendrithyst, except to talk around the problem.

Teressa was not about that.

She said, “But then I met Erick, and I gained a new appreciation for certain things. Like magic. I learned so much, and I can do so much more than what I was able to do before. You should learn everything you can, and you can protect your loved ones, too. Learn how to expand your senses into the mana. Learn aura control. Learn the sword, but above all, learn the shield. And don’t shy away from the smaller magics. They will save your life. That’s why Rozeta shares the magics made by one person, with every person.

“But don’t think you have to go large to protect your brother, or your sister, or your parents, from the evils of monsters and the Dark. There is no need for anything more than the smallest power, wielded properly. My boss made his magic out of the smallest parts of all. Tiny, invisible particles that make up all the world around us. He mastered that magic, and used that magic to kill all the Shades, and a million other monsters, including all the moon reachers of the Forest of Glaquin. Hundreds of thousands of monsters, all dead, at his hand. All because of him.”

The kids remained enthralled the whole time Teressa spoke.

Vorilo almost interrupted when Teressa went off script, but he refrained. At the end, he even looked a bit… hopeful, perhaps?

A boy, one of the most energetic of the lot, asked in a small voice, “Is he really from another world?”

Vorilo readily spoke up, “We’re talking of monsters and how to prepare against them. Think not of archmages, children.” He added, to Teressa, “It would be nice if you told them that moon reachers don’t live around here.”

While some kids complained—

Teressa said, “Your teacher is right. It is important to know the types of monsters out there in order to defend against them, but knowing how to defend and being able to defend are two different things. I can help you with the former, but with the latter, you must look to your elders and your own people.”

Vorilo smiled a little at that, then he stepped away, returning to the back of the room.

Teressa said, “One of the weakest monsters inside Ar’Kendrithyst is the shadowolf. They are muscle and bone and exposed flesh, wrapped in shadowy mange. They stalk through the kendrithyst crystal, hunting in packs, looking for easy prey. It is easy to get overwhelmed if you do not have the magical and martial power to fend them off, but they are only level 10 to 15, and they are stupid. Like the most basic of monsters, shadowolves come straight at you, with only one or two circling behind for a flanking strike. Their tactics are standard, and if you’ve fought one, you’ve fought them all.” She dropped her voice, saying, “But woe to thee if you should meet a pack of wolves that are overseen by a shadowcat. These dastardly felines are an abomination of shadow, and they lace their hundred-meter long tails into the skulls of lesser monsters, controlling them as one would control a hundred puppets at once.”

The kids were wide eyed.

More than a few would have nightmares, for sure, but that was fine.

Teressa talked of monsters, and the kids learned through their terror, just as she had been taught herself… Well. Mostly. When Teressa was younger she had been taught the best magics to use against certain monsters, right alongside learning about those monsters for the first time. If it was up to Teressa, she’d include things like ‘Shadowolves burn real good, so be sure to use Flaming spells on your weapons’, and ‘Even if you can’t cast much magic, you must have [Teleport], and you must always be able to cast it at least on yourself in case of an emergency’. These were facts that these kids should know, but which were kept from them.

But at least these kids wouldn’t be coddled behind walls like the Highlands did to all of their people.

It’s too bad most of them would never learn about magic, though.