Chapter Thirty-Five — A Spark in the Night
Setting up a tent in the rain was not the most fun thing to do. Getting all the poles in place, moving the tarp around, not getting tangled in the lines, it was all the frustrating end of a frustrating day. My blankets-which I had left on the floor of the wagon-were both sodden and wet. My cleaning spell took care of some of it, but it wasn’t a drying spell; they were still wet.I stepped out of my tent, rain pinging off my hat with a constant rap-tap-tap beat and took in our tiny camp. Milread had driven the wagon all the way up to a small cliff area that was higher off the ground than the rest of the forest. It meant that we got to sleep next to a wall of stones that did a decent job of keeping off the rain.There was a bit of a divot sliced into the rock, probably by some previous travellers. It served as a good spot to set up a little fire pit with all our tents in a circle around. The wagon was pushed into the trees to one side and Missy was left to graze opposite it.Basically, the camp was tight, cramped even, but it made sense to set it up that way. Our fire wouldn’t be visible from afar and if we had to fight something we would have a wall by our backs.I wished that such considerations didn’t matter. That we could all just enjoy a nice fire and a warm meal before snuggling into a warm bed.The others were all huddled around the anemic fire in the pit. It wasn’t much, just a few tiny licks of flame from some twigs and a small block of rune-covered wood that Milread had tossed in. It was growing though, and even with the tiny bit of warmth pouring out of it, the fire was welcome.“I...” I started to say before three pairs of eyes looked towards me.The others had not been happy with me after the thing with the pixies, Milread most of all. It had worked out, in the end, and no one had died. That didn’t matter to her. It had been silly and foolish and I could have been hurt with one wrong word. She wasn’t wrong, not entirely, but I didn’t think I had been all that wrong in the way I acted either.I tried again. “I can make tea. Chamomile, if you want?”“Fire’s not hot enough yet,” Noemi said.I pulled out my tea kettle, tucked under my arm since I had left my tent. “Enchanted tea set,” I said. “Can’t do much more than boil water, but, well...” I sat down on a log that had been there long before we arrived.“Sure,” Severin said. He had a set of camping utensils next to him, one a tin mug that he handed over to me.I added the herbs I had and let it fill with rain water as we waited.“Rainwater’s not good for drinking around here,” Milread said as she tossed in a log and sent up a small plume of embers that quickly died.“Cleaning spell,” I explained.“Ah.”I sat around and waited for enough water to fill the kettle. At the rate it was raining it wouldn’t take long. “I’m sorry,” I said.Milread looked up from the fire. “You’ve said that already,” she said.“I mean it this time.”Noemi scoffed and got up. “I’ll get the food,” she said.Milread eyed me for a good long while, until I felt like squirming under her hawkish gaze. “Next time you listen. Or you at least tell me of your fool plan before trying anything. I’m responsible for the lot of you. Severin and Noemi know what they’re about, they’re past their first rank, but you’re no better than a kid. Plus Juliette would turn my head into a mantlepiece if you died under my watch.”“I’m... sorry,” I repeated. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I just, I just really don’t like fighting.”“Then find a nice city with big walls and stay in it,” Milread said. “Out here you fight or you die.”It was quiet for a good long while after that. No, not quiet. There was the croak of hundreds of frogs, the occasional cry of a distant coyote, and that incessant pitter patter of rain on leaves. I brought my feet up onto the log so that I could hug my knees close to my chest for a bit of warmth.Noemi returned with a sack that she dropped next to the growing fire. She placed a pot next to her, the lid scrapping and pinging with every motion. “I’m cooking,” she said.“Got the skill?” Milread asked.“At apprentice. Got better?” Noemi asked.“Don’t even have it,” Milread said.Severin just shook his head.The grenoil woman started opening cans and adding spices to the pot. It stirred it all together then added it to the top of the fire. “Going to take a bit,” she said. “Could use a hotter fire too.”“Right,” Milread asked. She poked the fire one last time and then tossed the stick she was using onto the flames. “We need more wood if we’ll keep this going all night. And we need to set up a watch. Severin, can you do mage lights?”“For the sombrals? Of course,” the mage said. He huffed as he got to his feet. I noticed that he had tossed his boots at some point, but he didn’t seem to mind having his feet in the mud. He moved over to Milread and they both ambled off into the woods around our camp until I could just barely hear them from the crackle of branches and the shift of cloth.“So, um, Noemi, right?” I asked.“Do you really have to?” Noemi asked right back.“Have to what?”“Do this whole thing where you try to chat me up. If you were a grenoil boy I’d think you were a flirt.”I shook my head, bits of rain slipping off my hat. “No. I just want to make friends.”This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.Noemi sighed. “Yeah, that’s nice. Make friends with someone else.”I wasn’t sure what to say to that. I fumbled through a few openers, but none seemed to fit, and a direct response would just be so rude. I wondered if my Friendmaking skill could be of any use, but it felt more like a passive sort of thing. “So, why are you heading to Port Royal?” I asked.Noemi paused in the stirring of our supper. Her knuckles tightened around the spoon but she never looked away from her work. “I have family who died. I’m going to their funeral. Are you happy, now that you know?”“I’m sorry,” I said.“Good. You can apologize by keeping quiet.”I swallowed and looked away. The kettle was halfway full, leaves floating in lukewarm water. I fired an absent cleaning spell, then sighed when it made the flower buds I had left in the water poof away. It wasn’t my night.The tea was boiling and my mana was slowly dropping when the others returned. They settled down and I poured a cup for Severin then myself. The others begged off, but I left the kettle close, just in case.“This isn’t bad,” Severin said as he took a sip.“Thanks,” I said.Milread shook some water off of her hood. “We’re setting up rotations. Broccoli, you’re up first. I have some watch candles. You wake me when the wax hits the ring and the flame changes colour a little. Severin, you’re taking the late middle, Noemi, the last. We can change things around tomorrow.” She pulled a small fat candle from a pocket and, with the tip of a talon, made three marks around it before setting it to the side.“You trust her not to sleep?” Noemi asked.I stiffened.“Yeah. I’ll wake up for my watch either way,” Milread said.“Hrm,” was Noemi’s response. “Food’s ready.”We were each given a decent bowlful of some sort of stew. No actual meat, just different cuts of veggies in a sort of gravy with some spices. It was a little light on solids, but tasted good all the same. I was one of the first to finish eating. “I’ll clean up,” I said. “I’ve got cleaning at, um, disciple rank.”“Thanks,” Milread said. “I’m going to get some shut-eye. Good night.” She left her bowl on the log she had been perched on and walked off to her tent. Noemi soon did the same.“Do you think I can practice magic?” I asked Severin as I gathered all the utensils and pots.The older grenoil gave me his empty bowl, then refilled his mug with the last of the tea. “I don’t see why not. Don’t cast anyzing and you should be fine. Your light is no brighter zan the fire.”“Neat,” I said.Soon I was wishing him a good night and settling in as best I could next to the fire. I took a moment to fetch my spear, just in case. The candle Milread had left was lit with a twig and burned merrily despite the occasional raindrop that landed on it. Magic, maybe, or some clever alchemy?I focused on a hand. My right, because that was my dominant hand for day to day stuff. Magic moved into my limb until it tingled, then I pushed a little more. It was like shoving some of that dough stuff kids played with through a strainer. It didn’t flow out of the body easily, and pushing too much made my chest feel a little empty in a way that spending all of my mana didn’t.My mana didn’t dip down though, not unless I lost control of the mana and it slipped out of my grasp. So, the number in my status was the amount of mana I could control, not the amount I had in my body? No, that didn’t feel exactly right.Eventually I grew a little bored with just making my hand glow. Even shutting it off and bringing it back as quickly as I could grew tiresome, and it felt as if I was straining something inside of my hand when I did so. Like a new muscle, maybe.I formed the mana into a ball, then, when that didn’t work at all, I satisfied myself by cupping a blob of mana in my hand. Severin had said that my magic was cleaning aspect. That sounded... strange. I had grown up on stories with the usual magical elements. Fire, water, earth, air and so on. Cleaning was definitely not one of those.Maybe magic didn’t care about what I thought was usual and I would just have to deal with it.I tried to make my mana turn into fire mana. Severin had made it look easy, but it was far from it.At first I tried to make my mana look like fire, but that only made it bob around like jello. Thinking hot thoughts didn’t work, and getting angry was hard because I wasn’t an angry person. The hottest my emotions ever ran was mildly miffed. Maybe I’d manage to unlock mildly miffed aspect mana, but a mildly miffedball didn’t sound as awesome as a fireball.I looked at the fire before me, then jumped when I saw that it was dying.Getting to my hands and knees, I blew at the embers until they were nice and hot again, then added more sticks and branches to the fire until it was crackling merrily away.Maybe that was it. I had to treat my mana as a tiny fire?I spend an hour or so-occasionally looking around to the woods-trying to nurture a small fire in the palm of my hand.By the time Milread woke up I had almost seen a flicker.“You’re still awake?” Milread asked. She looked around, then scowled. “It’s still raining.”“It is, and I am,” I said. “Is it time for me to sleep now?”“Yeah, get some shut-eye. You’ll need it.”I slid into my tent and, after wasting some mana cleaning myself off, fell asleep under my moist blankets. It was a long night.
* * *
Chapter Thirty-Six — I Just Want to Set the World on Fire
The rain didn’t let up until halfway into the morning. By then we were trudging along in our wagon, bumping over potholes and generally just travelling on a long road that seemed to twist and turn all over the place.The ditches along the sides were full, a heavy current of muddy rainwater gurgling past us except where the road dipped and we had to pass through huge, but fortunately shallow, puddles.There were fewer trees as we travelled. The forests turned thin and the ground all around us became a marshy vista filled with the low drone of mosquitoes and flies and other bugs. Fortunately, Milread had a magic insect-repellent rune device that she activated to shoo off the bugs. It would have been a nightmare otherwise.I focused on my hand again, first came the pushing of mana out of the... I was going to call them mana pores because that’s what they felt like, then the concentrating of my mana into a flat shape on the surface of my palm, then I thought fiery thoughts and let my mana sort of just... burn.“You’re getting better,” Severin said as he eyed the fuzzy mana in my hand. “Zat’s not perfect fire aspect mana, but it might be close enough.”“Really?” I asked. The lapse in concentration made my mana construct, if it could be called that, fizzle out and take a few points of mana with it. “I’ve been practicing very hard.”“Yes. It’s almost enough to make up for your deficiency.”“Hey!” I said. “I’m not that bad, am I?” I asked.Severin made a wiggly motion with his hand. “You’re no prodigy. Perhaps had you started wiz holy or light spells you would be better. And you’re not exactly in a school environment. Zat might mitigate some of your slowness to learn.”I resisted the urge to pout. “I’m trying my best,” I said. And I really was. There wasn’t anything else to do while bumping along in the back of the wagon. I could have practiced my other skills but most of those weren’t easy to do. Talking had... not been fruitful. Noemi still refused to open up and Milread had remained coolly professional.I was beginning to think that people in this world were just not as friendly as people back home. Maybe they didn’t trust as easily, maybe there was some prejudice at play that I wasn’t aware of.Did the ‘why’ matter?If it was hard to make friends then I just had to work harder at it, that was all.Severin pulled out a small notebook from his pack, opened it to a fresh page, then fished out a strange quill with a bulb near its middle filled with ink. He scratched out a quick design then turned it around to show me. “Zis is ze side profile of a fireball spell. Side profiles are deceptively simple and useless for complex spells, but for somezing as simple as fireball it will do.”The drawing looked like a ball with a long tail behind it, like a comet, maybe. “That does look fireball-ish,” I said.“Most spells won’t look like zeir final product at ze creation stage. But fireball is, as I said, simple. It’s made of two parts. One, if you squint. Ze main payload and ze propellant. Have you ever seen a firework?”“Yes, a few times,” I said. Some in person and I had seen plenty on TV and online.“Do you know how zey work?” he asked next.“Um.” I tried to imagine what a firework’s internals looked like. “There’s a fuse, then some powder that burns through a... nozzle? And then after it takes off it eventually explodes? I guess there might be a fuse inside too?”Severin made a huffing noise. “Zat’s mostly correct, yes. Fireball is similar. Only ze entire zing in a mana construct. Let me show you.”“Hey hey, what did I say about no fire on my wagon?” Milread said.Severin scoffed. “I am no fool. She only needs to see, zere is no need to use fire-mana for it.” He reached a hand out and held it palm up between us. Mana rushed out of his hand and formed into a perfect ball, then a coil came out of that and formed a long, spiraling cone. “Zis is what a fireball looks like. Once formed, you will ze mana at the base to react and it goes off.”The wizard moved his hand over the edge of the wagon and fired off his spell. The mana, now looking like a ball of muddy... stuff, shot off into the marshes and splattered against a tree with a dull thump.“Cool!” I said. I wondered if that could be done with cleaning magic? Something to try next time I ran into some ghosties!“A ball of mana-constructed mud like zat won’t do much to harm an enemy. But many creatures are weak to fire. I suggest trying to form ze spell with your natural mana first. A ball of cleaning mana won’t do anyzing bad to anyone.”“Awesome!” I said as I jumped to my feet, then windmilled my arms around to stay upright. “I’m going to practice as I walk, I can’t stand being on my bum any longer.”The others didn’t seem to mind as I hopped off the side of the wagon and landed on the ground with barely a bend in my knees, the kind of acrobatics that would have hurt just a week ago. I hopped along next to the wagon, jumping from clear spot to clear spot along the road with only the occasional splash of mud to accompany my jumps. My jumping skill was nearly at Rank B.JumpingRank C — 77%Jumping wasn’t as practical in my day-to-day as Cleaning was, but it did give me the ability to run away from big scary monsters that Cleaning just didn’t. My other class skill, Gardening, wasn’t directly useful in combat at all. Though it was close to its own rank up too.If I had a couple of days to just practice all of my skills I was sure I could get them all to top rank. Actually, maybe I could get the others to help a little? Makeshift Weapons Proficiency might go up with some sparring and I could definitely use some help there. Insight... wasn't going to rank up anytime soon, so I could just let that rank up organically.The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.Between hops I toyed with my magic, forming my mana into a ball, then trying to give it a tail of sorts, but all I really succeeded in doing was making the blob distend into a longer, less shapely blob.Magic was tricky and hard. Which, I suppose, was only fair. It was magic, after all.We started moving uphill, which meant less water in the ditches and the puddles in the road were easier to avoid. Not that I did. Puddles were for jumping in, after all.I stopped advancing when I reached the top of the hill. I felt my mouth opening wide in a big ‘o’ of surprise before a huge grin took over.Our destination was right ahead of us. Still a little ways away, of course, but close enough that if I squinted I could make out the shapes of the bigger towers and the huge, multi-levelled walls encircling the city.Port Royal was huge, with towers all along one side and a large dock on the other where ships were hanging in the air, their big balloons bobbing just enough that I could see them moving from where I was.The path to the sky port was cut into the mountainside, a series of switchbacks that lead off from a small town at the very base of the mountain the port was built into.“We can see the Port!” I called back to the others.Milread gave me a knowing smile and even Noemi looked up from staring at the road to take in the city behind me.“Still half a day’s travel,” Milread said. That dampened my mood a little and I turned to inspect the road we would have to take to get there.I couldn’t see all of it, of course. Even if the forest was a bit thinner, there were still thousands of trees around. The road seemed to zig and zag around a lot, avoiding the larger untamed areas that looked a little too swampy for my taste.The only settlement I could see was the town at the base of the mountain, but I did spot a road leading off to the east and into the distant woods that way. I was practically shaking in my shoes when I jumped back onto the wagon. “I can’t wait to see what the city is like. And airships! Airships are the best.”Milread snorted. “Sure. Won’t argue with that. The best ones are made in Farseeing, of course.”“Farseeing?” I asked.“Ze harpy capital,” Severin answered. “Along the unimaginatively named Harpy Mountains. Port Royal is at the base of that mountain range, though it is Deepmarsh territory, not Nesting.”“Oh, neat,” I said. A world map was going to be one of my first purchases because I was getting lost just talking to them. “What’s Port Royal like?”“Bit messy,” Milread said. “Lots of folks from plenty of places. Most of the expensive goods from Deepmarsh make it to the port eventually, then they’re shipped elsewhere. And the opposite is also true, you have stuff from all over the world passing through Port Royal. Lots of strange folk with strange customs. Keep your hands to yourself and stick to the cleaner parts of the city and you’ll be fine.”“I can’t wait! Can you tell me anything about the Exploration Guild? I was thinking of joining them, but that’s mostly on a whim.”Milread hummed. “Mostly good folk. You could do well for yourself and they might give you some training on how not to get yourself killed. Risky work, but the pay can be great. The guild works across a couple of nations, so if you like traveling they might do good by you. I work for the Courier’s Union, we use the Exploration Guild to chart out new paths sometimes.”“Zere are some problems wiz any guild. Not just the fees and hierarchies. Ze Exploration Guild is relatively small for all zat it is spread out. The Guards Guild is bigger and safer, the Delvers more cut-throat but you’ll make more coins. The Monster Slayers will grant you access to plenty of training but you will probably die young as most of zeir members do.”“I would like to avoid dying if at all possible,” I said. ”Maybe I’ll give the Exploration Guild a try, then see how I feel after that. I do like the idea of seeing the world and just being sort of... free. Exploration Guild people work in parties right? Like a group of friends?”“That they do, and I wish you the best,” Milread said. She pointed ahead of us and towards a bit of a bend in the road. “We’re stopping there for a minute. Missy needs a breather and I need lunch. Noemi, you good to cook again?”“If you have ingredients I can use,” she said.“I’ve got some cans, some hardtack, a couple of other things,” I interjected. “I could forage a bit, if you want. I’ve got a skill for it, though it's kind of low ranked.”“Huh,” Milread said. “Alright. Maybe we’ll take a longer break then, get a good meal in and go for longer later. I want to arrive at the Port before nightfall. If we move too fast we might end up camping within running distance of the town.”“Wouldn’t it make sense to push on, zen?” Severin asked.Milread snorted. “That’s what everyone says. Then you end up pushing through the forest at night and go off the road or get ambushed. Trust me, one extra night under the stars won’t hurt anyone, but I’ll be making that choice later. For now, I’ll set up some traps and maybe catch us some meat. Broccoli, get to foraging. Noemi, tend the fire and get cooking. Severin, can you keep watch and care for Missy for a bit?”We rolled into a small camping spot next to the road, and just like that our group broke up.
