Siphon (A Touch of Power Book 1)

by Jay Boyce

  You have touched Elisa Scribner, Siphon activated. Assessing stats and experience...

  Choose a stat to siphon: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Magic, Charisma, or Luck.

  Choose a skill to siphon: Alchemy, Diplomacy, Herbology, Insight, or Perception.

  She tossed alchemy and herbology out the window straight off, but that did explain the herby smell that she’d vaguely whiffed from Elisa. It wasn’t what she needed right now, because again, she was still in the middle of the city. Plus, for alchemy, she would need all the tools and ingredients. That left diplomacy, insight, and perception. She already had diplomacy and perception, but she figured Elisa probably had way more experience than the others she’d taken from. But insight… She hadn’t seen anyone with that yet.

  With the opinion that the more tools she had, the better off she would be, she chose insight and then confirmed her decisions for the two of them mentally. She smiled at them and said cheerfully, “Maybe one day I’ll be just as lucky to find someone…” Two blue boxes had popped up on her mindscreen, and they were the last thing she saw before her vision went black and she felt herself falling.

  She was out cold. So much for her conviction to wait until the last batch had finished...

  Siphoning complete. Assimilation of Magic and Healing Magic from Mike Scribner underway.

  Siphoning complete. Assimilation of Luck and Insight from Elisa Scribner underway.

  Chapter Five – Altered

  “It’s fascinating. The changes are occurring every hour…”

  “Yes, but when will she wake up? It’s already been six hours…”

  “I think she’s starting to wake up…” She was. Waking up, that is. She could hear their voices through what sounded like a really long tunnel through which she was very, very slowly reaching the end. Their murmured conversation was slowly processed as she tried to figure out where she was.

  Her brain felt like she’d been hit by a truck, either that or like she had a massive hangover. Not that she’d touched a drop of alcohol in her life, but still. She imagined the pounding in her skull was comparable. Why did everything hurt so much? She tightened her muscles on reflex, only to have her eyes shoot open. She could feel her feet!

  Above her stood a kind plump lady and a stately older man. She blinked blankly at them, trying to figure out which of the nurses or doctors they were. There had been so many over the years, but she didn’t think these two matched the current rotation… Were they visitors? She didn’t get visitors. Why could she feel her feet?

  “Oh sweetheart, how are you feeling? You gave me a right scare when you passed out on us…” Jade stared blankly until she noticed that in the top right of her vision were some blinking blue dots. Her memories of the day came back in a rush, and she started hyperventilating. She could hear Mike and Elisa trying to calm her down, and she grabbed onto Elisa’s arm, staring at her almost feverishly.

  “It wasn’t a dream? I’m really here?”

  A note of pity crossed Elisa’s face momentarily as she confirmed, “Oh, dear. It’s real. You’re here in Abala.” She exchanged glances with Mike, seemingly imploring him to tell her what to do. She hadn’t had to deal with a lost traveler before.

  Mike reached over, patting them both on the shoulder reassuringly. “Never mind that. Why don’t we get you something to eat, I’m sure that’ll help you get back on your feet.”

  “Oh, right!” Elisa jumped to her feet, bustling off, while Jade just stared at Mike for a second.

  “Back…on my feet? Feet!” She looked down again, remembering that she could actually feel them now. She moved them quickly, jerking to her feet. Mike grabbed hold of her before she pitched forward onto her face, but she was giggling like a maniac. “I can walk! I forgot!” Mike chuckled softly with or at her; she wasn’t quite sure which really, but he seemed to find her joy infectious.

  He humored her, helping her walk around the back room a few times as she beamed with joy, simply reveling in the feel of walking on the wooden floor. When her stomach rumbled and she realized she was hungry, Mike led her into the next room where Elisa was putting several full bowls of some type of soup that smelled absolutely amazing on the table.

  “Sit down, sit down. Let’s get something in you!” Elisa seemed happy to be able to fuss over her, and the three of them sat down. Jade watched them discreetly to see if they were planning on saying any sort of grace, but when they didn’t, she too picked up her spoon. “Eat, eat!” Elisa urged her, and she required no further encouragement, digging in happily.

  When she had completely cleared her bowl, she looked up again to see Elisa beaming at her. She smiled back, but upon remembering that she had basically just passed out, she tilted her head, asking quietly, “So uhmm… How long was I out?”

  Mike answered promptly, “It’s been about six hours since you passed out. It was the most curious thing. You seemed to go through two growth spurts every hour until the end there when your body finally settled down. How do you feel?”

  Now that he asked, she started to take inventory of her body. It was…strange. Everything felt just a little…altered. Her skin felt tighter, and if she wasn’t wrong, it felt like she was a little more stable than before. Had she put on muscle? Without a before and after picture, she wondered if she’d ever really know what had changed for sure.

  “Do you have cameras? Or clocks? How do you tell time?” She blurted her questions out abruptly, unable to contain her curiosity anymore. She really needed to figure out what the level of technology in this world was.

  Elisa gazed at her curiously, asking in return, “What’s a camera? As for time, we do have clocks. Most of us keep a pocket watch, or people just listen for the tower to ring the bells.” She said it like it should have been obvious, pulling her pocket watch out as if to emphasize her point.

  Stymied and yet slightly mollified, Jade tried to explain. “Clocks are good… Cameras… They’re...uhm… It’s like a painting that a machine takes instantly of your likeness?”

  Mike grinned. “That sounds fascinating. How does this camera work?”

  Jade’s smile fell as she realized…she had no idea. “I...don’t know, sorry. It had been invented a long time past in my world, so the process was automated by machines by the time I was born…” At least, she thought it had. She couldn’t remember a time when they hadn’t had cameras. Besides, TV had been around for forever, and hadn’t cameras come first? Whatever, she couldn’t do anything about it at this point. It wasn’t like there was the internet to look up the pertinent information, sadly.

  “Oh, don’t worry dearie. It’s fine if you don’t know.” Elisa looked like she wanted to ask more about her world, but thankfully she stopped herself. Apparently tact was a strong point, and she had realized that Jade’s lack of knowledge was perturbing her.

  Jade finally realized something else as she observed them, “Oh no, I owe you money, don’t I? Doctors are so expensive…”

  Mike and Elisa exchanged glances, and Mike put down his silverware. “No, you don’t owe us anything.”

  Jade tried to interrupt. “But the cost of healthcare for doing a checkup and taking care of me when I passed out and food…” She was rambling.

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s been a pleasure to have you here.” They ignored her old world references, though she wasn’t quite sure they’d even caught them, given that she’d been talking so fast. But she was totally right. They were the clichéd childless couple. They were going to tell her they wanted to adopt her and… “Our kids don’t come around all that often, so it’s nice to have someone young around.” He smiled benevolently. Okay. So maybe they weren’t going to adopt her, though that might have conveniently solved a bunch of her problems. “Besides, studying your condition was absolutely fascinating!”

  Well...apparently she was his new favorite science project. She could deal with that even if it wasn’t ideal; most of the other doctors had been the same way with her, so at l
east she was familiar with it. The perpetual puzzle, the guinea pig that no one could figure out what was wrong with. She had tried so many treatments, and none of them had done a thing. She’d had her death predicted many times before, so it’s not like it was a new thing.

  Smiling sweetly, she decided that she would do the same thing she had before. Use the fact that they wanted something from her to get some benefits for herself. For now, that would come in the form of information. There was still so much she didn’t know…

  “Could you maybe tell me more about the money system here? I don’t want to get ripped off when I’m out and about.”

  Mike and Elisa looked at each other, nodding thoughtfully before Elisa walked into the other room, returning with a handful of varied coins. She gave a silent prayer of relief when she recognized the four metals. Please let it be the same conversion as DnD… That would be perfect. She directed her thoughts to the heavens as Elisa set the four coins on the table, nodding to Mike, who spoke. “There are four main coins. There are the copper coins, which are called nuts. Ten of them are equal to one of the silver coins, which are called leaves. Ten leaves are equal to a golden laurel, and ten laurels are equal to the platinum crown.” She heaved a quiet sigh of relief. That was math that she could do.

  She absently studied the coins, running her fingers over them. She figured it would be easy enough to remember the names. The nuts had a sprouting acorn depicted against a really tall mountain with clouds floating by on what she dubbed the front side. The leaves had almost the same picture, but instead of an acorn, it had what looked like a maple leaf. Of course, the color was different too. The nuts had smooth edges, but the leaves had notched edges, almost like a dime. They seemed about the same sizes as the coins she was used to as well. The nut was about the size of a penny, the leaf the size of a nickel.

  However, the laurels and crowns were more intricately crafted. The edges of the laurel were part of the image, like the laurels the old Romans had given to the first winners of the Olympics, their leaves were masterfully formed to create the raised image. The inside of the coin held what looked like a delicate willow tree. About the size of a quarter, it was beautiful to her.

  The crowns were amazing too! Like one of those small round crowns, the edge of the coin was a little crown design, tiny knobs coming up to form the ‘tips’ of the crown, with little diamond shaped insets to represent gems on the side. On the face of the coin was a cherry tree, but there was an intricate crown circling the trunk in the middle of the coin. It was fantastic workmanship on a coin the size of a dollar coin.

  On the back of each coin was a picture of this amazing castle with a bunch of pretty turrets and the word Caoi in cursive across the bottom. All in all, they either had a fantastic coin mold or...no, that was pretty much the only thing she could think of. If someone tried to do this by hand, it would take ages. Once she’d finished studying them, she smiled at the patiently waiting couple and began her questioning again.

  “Can you give me a few examples of what I can buy with them? Like, say, how much would a healing cost normally?” She kinda needed to know the price range for that especially, given that she had decided that she would probably be his competitor. Or at least, she figured healing was going to be her ticket into the academy, as long as she could figure out how to do it.

  Mike turned to Elisa, who was obviously in charge of the money. She smiled and continued where he left off. “You can normally get a loaf of bread or a mug of ale for two nuts. Healing shallow wounds usually costs a few leaves, and a major healing could range anywhere from laurels to crowns, depending on how serious it is and the rank of the magician. Mikey here is one of the best, so his services are generally high in demand.” She looked proudly at him. Okay, she’d not given her a whole lot to work with, but she could figure it out from there. Basically, healing was awesome and expensive. Pretty typical.

  She was going to have to come back and siphon them again if she could. Although maybe next time she would wait until AFTER she was in bed to confirm. She figured that was probably the best plan at this point. If she was going to black out, it was better to do it somewhere safe. Plus, if blacking out made her skip the whole unbearable itching part of the plan, she figured it was a fair trade-off. As long as she was safe, that is. She was going to try really hard not to collapse in public again.

  They talked for another half hour or so, giving her a better idea of what to expect as far as money was concerned, what stores were available, and how to get back to The Green Dragon, the best watchmaker’s place, and the academy testing grounds. Elisa had even drawn her a little make-do map on a spare piece of parchment so that she could reference it if she got lost. Although granted, she could probably just ask around and just about anyone would be able to point her in the right direction.

  Smiling, she thanked them for their time and care, leaving shortly thereafter with Mike’s entreaty to come back so he could study her condition some more. She hid her slight revulsion at the request, figuring it was the least she could do for stealing his profession, hopefully. She hadn’t had a chance to check her profile since she’d woken up. She waved at them as she stepped outside into the afternoon sunlight.

  Breathing deeply of the fresh air, she glanced around to find another alleyway. Making sure she was out of sight of Mike’s place, she found a mostly comfortable place to sit down and pulled up her profile. It was time to see what her stealing had netted her. From what she could tell, her ability worked for like…five or six hours after she started the siphon. From what Mike said, she guessed that she got a portion of it every hour, so it was more of a gradual absorption.

  Glancing around to make sure no one was paying attention to her, she pulled up her notifications first.

  Assimilation completed for: Kaylee Ivers, Jessica Dorney, Raphael Millis, Steven Cooper, Travis Wainbright, Chloe Chambers, Mike Scribner, and Elisa Scribner. Profile has been updated.

  She had several more that she’d ignored earlier telling her to choose what to siphon from the random people she’d run into along the way to Mike’s, but she left those alone again and pulled up her profile. She didn’t really want to black out currently, and she was curious to see how long they would last. She’d gotten them a good six-plus hours ago, so if they kept until she was ready to go to bed, that would be awesome. If they didn’t, she needed to figure out approximately how long it took them to go away. Given that it was mid-afternoon, she guessed that if she waited until sundown, it would have been somewhere like 10-12 hours later. She wasn’t exactly certain when she had left, and she had totally spaced asking Elisa what the time actually WAS. Maybe she’d just ask a random passerby if they had the time…

  Enough stalling. Taking a deep breath, she read the blue box in front of her.

  Name: Jade Winward

  Age: 18

  Strength: 8.26

  Dexterity: 8.51

  Constitution: 7.99

  Intelligence: 15.58

  Magic: 11.38

  Charisma: 9.17

  Luck: 13.71

  Special Abilities: Siphon

  Skills: Appraisal, Athletics, Bluff, Diplomacy, Healing Magic, Insight, Mathematics, Navigation, Perception, Sense Motive, Walking, Wind Magic

  Wait, she had seriously gotten walking? She almost laughed aloud. It had really happened. But what was the whole skill experience thing she’d heard about? As she focused on the skills, a new chart popped up.

  Appraisal

  Beginner 1

  50%

  Athletics

  Beginner 2

  40%

  Bluff

  Beginner 1

  50%

  Diplomacy

  Beginner 2

  45%

  Healing Magic

  Beginner 7

  66%

  Insight

  Beginner 2

  9%

  Mathematics

  Beginner 2

  45%

  Navigation

 
Beginner 1

  10%

  Perception

  Beginner 2

  30%

  Sense Motive

  Beginner 1

  20%

  Walking

  Beginner 1

  90%

  Wind Magic

  Beginner 2

  82%

  Well, that was…informative? She had no idea what the different levels meant, but she was right that Mike was a jackpot. He was also for sure the reason she’d passed out before. Everything else was beginner 1 or 2, while healing had jumped straight to 7.

  Curious, she wondered just how much she could heal. Glancing around, she spotted a sharp rock. She picked it up and hesitated for just a moment before bringing it down on her left arm. If she couldn’t heal it herself, she was sure Mike would probably fix her up if she told him she tripped on the way back…

  “Gosh dangit, that hurts!” She muttered in pain as she gawked at her now sluggishly bleeding arm. She’d only meant to bruise herself, but she was obviously more talented in inflicting self harm than she’d anticipated. Well…now what? She hadn’t seen Mike heal anyone or do anything other than touch her hand and close his eyes. Hoping that it was instinctual, she dropped her rock and poked the wound, trying not to wince as she did so.

  In her mind’s eye, she could almost see it, though just the surface of the wound. Gleefully, she felt a strange energy rushing to her fingertips and through her body. She pictured the wound pushing out a little more blood to make sure she didn’t trap any dirt in there and then knitting closed. For once, being around doctors seemed like it was worth it. She had so much of what she considered useless medical know-how because she’d been around them all day, and the nurses had taken pity on her and kept her company. Naturally, they’d described some of the other cases they’d seen. She’d looked things up the first few times so she would know what the heck they were talking about, but after that, she’d gotten used to all their jargon and could talk medicine and treatments like she was one of them. Weird maybe, but it had ensured her comfort.