by Sean Oswald
Upon seeing Dave enter the room, Talvenicus had made a beeline over for him. The kitchen was pretty crowded with a small table, washbasin, foot storage bins, and a large square wood stove, but the older man made his way through the children and past the two women busily cooking with an assortment of pans on top of the stove. “I’m so glad you are here. I didn’t know how to tell her no, but I just felt awful having a Daughter of Redemption cooking for us. And worse when she is a guest in our house. But now that you are here, I guess it is appropriate for a woman to cook for her husband even if she is a priestess.”
Dave just looked at the mayor blankly for a moment. Sure, he and Emily had had some fairly traditional marital roles, but that didn’t mean that either of them thought that it was Emily’s duty to wait hand-and-foot on Dave. At least not any more than it was his duty to wait on her. They had always taken the teamwork approach to doing things around the house. When it comes to laundry, the first time that he had ruined one of her favorite white blouses by mixing some of Jackson’s red onesies into a load of white had been the last time that Dave had been allowed to touch the washing machine and that was like a dozen years ago. With cooking though, they split that because they were both equally good at it. All of that crossed Dave’s mind as he said, “Well, she doesn’t mind cooking for you either. We are very grateful for opening your home to us.”
“Don’t mention it. It is we who owe you the debt for the lives you have saved and the lives you will save in the future. It’s not saying too much to say that Eris’ Rise might have faded from the map come this next winter but for you and your family joining us.” The mayor’s words were passionate as he moved his hands to emphasize how strongly he felt about the issue.
“We are happy to help, and if she hasn’t told you already, Emily wants to make this town our home, at least for as long as the children are still growing.”
“The town council had hoped as much, which is part of why it was such a quick decision to appoint you as the first town sheriff.”
Dave grinned. He had wondered a little bit at their quick willingness to place him in such a position of authority and trust in the town, but it made sense if it got them a priestess. “Just don’t let her catch you saying that it’s a woman’s duty to cook. Where we come from, men and women share those responsibilities equally, or at least however the couple decides to share it.”
“Women waiting until they are thirty to marry, men cleaning houses. I don’t know whether to be intrigued or horrified by the idea of such a place,” Talvenicus said with chagrin.
“You and me both, brother.” Dave’s grin truly erupted as he slapped Talvenicus on the shoulder. The older man shared in his smile but winced as Dave still wasn’t used to just how strong he was now.
“What are you peacocks going on about over there?” Emily questioned playfully. She then looked at Aloysia and winked.
“Oh, nothing at all, priestess.” The mayor’s response was overly serious and almost caused Emily to burn a finger out of amusement as his flustered response.
Searching for a quick subject change, Dave said, “That bacon smells so good. I could almost believe we were at home on a quiet Saturday morning.”
“Then go wake up the sleepyhead and I will get plates ready for all of you.” If Aloysia minded Emily taking charge in the kitchen, she hid it well and instead she started setting out seven plates for them all to eat.
A few minutes later, all of them were crowded around the small table packed with chairs taken from the larger dining room. The kids were apparently starting to feel more comfortable here because their easy acceptance of everything started to fade. Emily commented about being willing to kill for a cup of coffee. The turn of phrase apparently not common in Albia as it provoked shocked expressions from both Talvenicus and Aloysia. Mira had jumped in to explain what Emily meant and smoothed things over. This led to a conversation about coffee. Apparently, it was a luxury item that was very expensive and difficult to obtain unless you were nobility, no matter the price. Dave couldn’t care less as he had never understood the appeal of six-dollar coffees from Starbucks, but Emily, and lately Mira, was like so many people back home, almost dependent upon a cup of coffee to wake them up each morning. He supposed that the adrenaline rush of the past few days had substituted but now that death didn’t seem so imminent, it was not surprising that they would start missing some of the things from home.
After coffee, the next thing that they found out they wouldn’t be able to enjoy much of was various spices. Salt was expensive but at least they had some of it, although it was mostly used for preserving food rather than for seasoning. Ginger, pepper, cinnamon, and to a lesser extent, sugar were only available in very small quantities. It appeared that a quarter pound of pepper cost five days wages for a laborer. It was not something that the mayor kept in stock. This explained why the oatmeal and stew that they had been eating each day was so bland. Apparently, they were fortunate that the mayor at least had a small amount of sugar and cinnamon, just not enough to accommodate their habitual tastes.
Dave and Emily both wanted to crawl under the table in shame at the poor reaction Sara had, saying she would “just die” if she didn’t get something yummy. What made it worse was the way Talvenicus took it as a sign of poor hospitality on his part and tried to apologize for not having things up to the family’s normal standards. After Emily had taken Sara out of the room to lecture her, Dave had done his best to once again assured the mayor that this was just the tantrum of a child. It seemed hard for the older man to understand though how a child would act out if all her needs had been provided. Based on his observations over the last couple of days in Eris’ Rise, the children all behaved impeccably. He laughed to himself, thinking of all the child psychology books that Emily had made them read to help with parenting and all the advice from so-called professionals which ultimately had all come down to ways of mitigating the selfishness of a child. By all outward standards, even rural Illinois far exceeded Albia and maybe all of Eloria in technology and certainly in creature comforts, but these backwater people had somehow figured out how to raise respectful, hard-working children who made their parents proud and contributed to the community even from a young age. He thought about Vogt, the ten-year-old who was deemed responsible enough to carry water two miles from the river to his home each morning and compared that image to what had been expected of children back home. Wow! That was all he could think, there was no comparison. In that moment, Dave determined not to be biased or to believe that he automatically knew a better way just because he came from a more technologically and perhaps even socially advanced society. He would learn what he could from these people, and not just about Eloria, but about life. Whether he truly had to stay in Eloria for the rest of his life or if they might someday find a way back to Earth, he had a feeling that the simple people of Eloria had a lot they could teach the Nelsons.
Thirteen had flown out of the capital, but only nine remained. Twelve squad members and Hasert’s apprentice, all of them trained and equipped but still only one of their opponents had fallen. It was frustrating. No, that wasn’t the right word. It was heartbreaking to see the men and women under his command die. Every commander knows that it can happen, but one of the chief reasons that Max had agreed to join the Purple and Gold was because of the type of missions that they performed. It wasn’t that their missions were free of danger. Far from it. It was only that due to the need for the Purple and Gold to be seen as invincible, they were always sent with overwhelming force against any objective. This was supposed to be a simple scouting mission, confirming if the nobles were truly supporting the logging villages and therefore the war efforts. It was beyond him to understand how this had gone so wrong. For them to be attacked as they had been spoke of a high level of organization and equally of inside information. They had been betrayed and he had to trust that it wasn’t the king who had set them up. He couldn’t think of anything that he had done which would have upset the king. Th
at meant that more likely than not it one of the nobles acting against them. Yet sending what he now believed to be three tier 3 monsters against them and ones especially suited to sneak attacks, spoke of massive resources. What could his squad learn that could have been so damaging. It just didn’t make sense.
All those thoughts and more went through Max’s head as his squad traveled on foot to their objective. Four days had passed, and they had made it only a little over half the remaining distance. The need to avoid roads was becoming less and less of an issue the further north they got as the towns were fewer in number and farther apart. They were probably only a few miles from the last of the villages… well, until the logging villages along the Seinna River. The logging villages were almost twenty miles removed from the furthest that Albian settlers had gone prior to this. The real delay, though, had not been the need for secrecy but rather the periodic attacks from the wyverns. Sometimes they would be attacked every two hours. Other times there would be twelve hours between attacks. Never knowing when or where the attacks would come had taken its toll even on his well-trained squad. None of them had escaped the past four days without an injury, and they were working through all of their healing potions. Soon, they would be left with only natural healing to survive the attacks. At least no one had died since Leo. The key seemed to be avoiding the venomous tail strikes. The claws and fangs were bad enough, but without a healer, they had no real solution for the poison.
Today they had been on the road for almost an hour when the first attack came. Max and Hasert had spoken the night before about the need to end these attacks, so it was with reluctance that they had put a plan into place. A plan with more risk but hopefully a chance of getting rid of their foes. They were going to have one member of the squad walking a good hundred feet in front of the rest of the squad and all alone. Max had originally argued that he would only agree to this plan if he were the one to act as bait. Hasert had applied logic to the situation, and they had assessed each of the squad members to determine who would be best suited to it. Eventually, the wizard had come to the unpleasant conclusion that he was the only one who could do this. First off, in his robes he would appear more vulnerable to the wyverns than the more heavily armored members of the squad. Secondly, Hasert was the only one who had a spell that could provide invisible protection to himself. Finally, while it was cold, Hasert was the oldest member of the squad and neither he nor Max could bear to risk one of the younger members.
So, it was that Hasert was walking along through the waist-high grasses common in this part of Albia, cloaked in an invisible magical shell that he had designed himself. His Thunder Dome spell was a high-grade tier 3 spell and was the crowning achievement of his career. It could only be cast on the caster himself, but it provided an invisible barrier around him. Well, at least it was invisible until it was triggered. The wizard chuckled to himself when he remembered how mad Max had been when he learned that only the caster could be inside the thunder dome.
Thunder Dome
Magic school: Divination, Conjuration, Evocation, Abjuration.
Tier: 3rd
Spell creates an invisible dome around the caster with a maximum radius of 3’+2”/level. The dome will detect if any hostile creature attempts to enter the affected area and then activate. Upon activation, an electrical charge is sent over the surface of the dome and anything crossing it takes 50 + 1/level damage and must resist or be paralyzed for up to a tick. Any living or undead being within the area of effect is subject to 25 +1/level damage every tick it remains in the dome. Further, all stealth-related skills or spells are dispelled within the area of effect and for a tick after leaving the area of effect. Cast Time: 12 seconds. Duration: 1 hour or 1 minute after being activated. May be extended by channeling mana into the spell. Cooldown: 1 hour. Mana Cost: 300.
Laughing to himself was a good thing now that he was acting as bait for two deadly creatures that specialized in stealthy assassination-type attacks. The old wizard was approaching sixty and was one of the most accomplished magic users both in terms of combat experience and his experience at research. Of course, he had no delusions about his power. Tier 3 was impressive here in Albia, but in the old world, he would be at best an apprentice. That, though, was the purpose of his research, to restore some of the glory of magic to the new world. It was still good though to be a big fish in a small pond. The author of no less than three completely unique spells and that while serving as a member of a Purple and Gold squad. He couldn’t wait for his twilight years spent researching, and he was almost there. His contract called for him to train his apprentice until she was Tier 2 and then he would be allowed to retire and collect a handsome royal pension. Pleasant dreams of long days researching and quiet evenings spent smoking his pipe, sipping a fine vintage wine, and pondering the complexities of magic were ripped away as his Thunder Dome flared to life.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Know what you know and care about the person, care about what you know and care about the person you’re sharing with. —Maya Angelou
Emily sent Jackson to keep an eye on Sara while the rest of them sat down with Talvenicus and Aloysia to talk about distributing points. Dave and Emily had discussed this during a break in the hunt the day before, and Dave had even passed it on to Mira. This time before spending points, they wanted to ask Talvenicus some questions. He seemed very knowledgeable about some things but surprisingly ignorant about other things. There were certain elements of Elorian life that he just seemed to chalk up to being the province of the nobility. For example, he really had no idea how one achieved the higher tiers or even how high of a tier the nobles were. He seemed very content with where he was and much more interested in discussing how to improve crafting skills.
Talvenicus divulged that the chief hold up for most craftsmen in increasing their skill levels was the twin bottlenecks of not enough XP to increase the skills and not enough high-quality materials to work with. A base-level craftsman could continually create untold copies of the same item and not achieve any increase in skills. Talvenicus told them that all skills could be increased through three methods. First, a skill could be increased by applying character points. That was by far the quickest, but since character points could typically only be earned through combat, there were not very many craftsmen who were either willing to or, even if willing to, able to find the right kind of party to gain XP.
The second method was to find a qualified trainer. Apparently, a trainer not only had to have a high enough level in the relevant skill but typically also needed to have at least a single level in the Mentor skill, with higher levels of Mentor providing significant increases in the probability of success in the training. Apparently, the trainer had to be at least 1 tier higher than the trainees, and it worked better if they were even higher. From what the mayor described, trainers were highly sought after and rarely worked with non-nobles unless it was military trainers. The sole exception to this was that mages could always teach spells they knew to other mages with the required skill level in the relevant school of magic. He had never done it, but from what the old mage understood there was a chance of failure, but he wasn’t sure what the relevant factors were. His lack of knowledge about this reminded Dave to remember that the information they were getting, while it might be true as far as Talvenicus knew, was inherently limited by the mayor’s knowledge. When asked why all mages didn’t share spells, the older man almost laughed out loud before regaining his composure. He simply replied that they had obviously never dealt with many mages. The best news out of this was that hopefully with three spellcasters in the family, they would be able to teach each other spells.
The third method of increasing a skill level was through the use of that skill. Talvenicus made it clear that this would almost never work for combat or magic skills but would work a little more often for crafting or research type skills. Swinging a sword around would almost never increase the skill but using it to kill stuff would give you the XP gained as a byprod
uct of the slain being’s life force returning to Eloria. Craftsmen could increase a skill but not by simply mass-producing a simple product. No, crafting increases came from recognizing new applications or creating new products. It didn’t necessarily have to be a completely new item. Sometimes just refining the process would suffice. The higher the skill level got though, the harder it was to increase it through simple practice, especially without rare materials.
Dave was shocked to learn about how many different crafting skills there were as none of them had shown up on his selection screen. It was interesting to learn that this was because crafting and gathering skills could only be learned if someone taught them to you, at least for the first point. They were not the sort of things you could learn on your own. The crafting skills included Alchemy, Blacksmithing, Brewing, Carpentry, Cooking, Engineering, Fletching, Jewel crafting, Mentoring, Pottery, Refining, Research, Rune crafting, and Tailoring. While gathering skills were comprised of Fishing, Herb Collecting, Hunting, Mining, Salvage, Skinning, and Woodcutting. Dave asked about the herb collecting since he said that his Forest Survival skill had indicated that he could use it to collect ingredients for cooking or alchemy. Talvenicus explained in response that the gathering skills, other than salvage, were all subskills to the related survival skills but that the survival skill bonuses only applied in that specific environment, while the more specialized sub-skill would work in any part of the world.
Emily finally had to interrupt the two men as Dave kept asking for more detailed information explaining each of the skills or at least as much as the mayor knew. “I am excited for you to learn about these skills and for us to determine how we might best contribute to Eris’ Rise, but time is wasting now, and I have sick patients. I only agreed to all of this with the hope of learning more magic that may be able to save these men.”
