Mage Tank

The portal to the Pocket Closet would travel with the wagon while it was open. The portal exit would not travel with the wagon while it was closed and I was inside. This led to a mildly embarrassing moment where I stumbled out into the middle of the busy street and had to jog to catch up with the group.

We had two small cabins on the barge. Cole and Ember would stay in one, while everyone else would sleep inside the Pocket Closet barracks, with the entrance located inside the second cabin.

A horde of suntanned men and women labored to load the vessel with crates of goods as we boarded. All of them did their best to avoid looking anyone in our group in the eyes, and essentially acted as though we didn’t exist while simultaneously doing everything they could to ensure their presence didn’t offend us. Moments like this reminded me that most Delvers were nobility.

“Welcome aboard! Welcome, welcome,” said the captain, who scurried out to greet us the moment we approached the ship. He was short and plump and wore a fancy blue doublet and matching tudor flat cap. The man looked like he hadn’t done a single day’s worth of manual labor in his entire life.

“It is truly a privilege to have so many men and women of your great stature joining us for this voyage,” he said, giving us all a saccharine smile and bowing slightly as he spoke. “I have endeavored to make your accommodations as comfortable as possible. Although my humble ship is only able to provide a modest measure of luxury, I assure you I have gone to great efforts to ensure your privacy and have tasked two of my brightest crewmen with providing you anything you need. I’ve also taken the liberty of opening a crate of the finest vintage I trade in, a lovely merlot favored by the crown prince himself!”

“Only one crate?” said Ashe.

“I’ll have a second delivered immediately if you find it to your liking,” the captain said, smiling easily. He was obviously used to catering to indulgent requests. “One of my primary trades is in spirits, so I have a little–or a lot–of just about everything on board. I’m happy to provide anything that you desire.”

Lito gave Ashe a withering stare.

“Please ignore her, Captain Mot. If you sought to truly slake her thirst she might ruin you.”

“The offer is on the table, nonetheless. Central was insistent that I spare no expense while hosting.”

“That doesn’t seem like something Umi-Doo would do,” said Ember.

“Dalton probably wrote a blank check to try and get one over on the old Sorcerer,” said Cole.

“I’ll have one of everything,” said Ashe.

“No,” said Lito, “you won’t.”

“Come on now, Smokey, don’t ruin the fun. Unless you’re afraid to drink with me again?”

“We’re all afraid to drink with you,” said Ember.

“I’m not,” said Myria.

Cole rolled his eyes.

“That’s because you wanna make out with her.”

“Don’t threaten me with a good time, Myri,” Ashe said, sauntering up next to the dark-skinned woman.

Lito frowned and rubbed his temples.

“Just show us to the cabins, please.”

****

Once we were settled, Nuralie began working on her alchemy while Lito chain-smoked on the deck and became deeply engaged in conversation with Cole. Myria and Ashe received their wine, along with a few different bottles of various other alcoholic beverages, and joined Xim, Ember, and I in the training room I’d created.

The room was sparse, but I’d assigned the portion of my inventory replete with varying lethal instruments to appear inside the space. As a result, the walls of the room were lined with steel straight swords, rapiers, cutlasses, greatswords, daggers, various other specialized blades, spears, halberds, pikes, hammers, axes, maces, bows, a couple different shields, and a whole fuckton of arrows. They floated at chest-height, held aloft by whatever invisible force kept my items in stasis. There was some amount of “oohs” and “aahs” at the sight, but the novelty of the effect quickly wore off in the eyes of the magically-jaded Delvers.

I was then able to convince the group to start showing me the ropes of the different weapons. This quickly got out of hand as the group of supernaturally-talented women began having heated discussions over the advantages of their own chosen implements, and maligned those wielded by the others.

Well, it was mostly Myria and Ashe, whose liberal imbibement inflamed their passions, while Ember calmly commented only when she could provide insight. Xim was rotating through each of the weapons, reducing the crate the wine arrived in down to ever finer degrees of splinters, along with a few empty barrels that had been acquired from…somewhere. For demonstration purposes.

I eventually managed to begin the embarrassing process of displaying my complete lack of expertise to the women, one weapon at a time. I’d never been too concerned with making a fool of myself, and I’d never had much of a problem with nerves around the opposite sex, like some of my friends had, but this was like a panel of expert biologists watching an adult toddler draw a picture of mitosis with crayons. There was no real excuse for me to be this bad, especially since I was a friggin Delver. My pimped out armor was probably making me seem even more inept.

Was I a clown? The Delver jester? The cartoon character that survives having an anvil dropped on their head, but can’t catch a goddamn mouse to save their life? What the fuck was I doing?

“Wow, Arlo,” said Ashe. “Did you learn to use anything while training for the Creation Delve?”

“That’s not constructive, Ashe,” said Ember. “The first step to recovery is acknowledging that you need help.”

“Recovery from what?”

“From being bad at…” Ember gestured vaguely at me, “...everything.”

“Arlo’s not bad at punching things,” Xim offered. “But his main strength is survival.”

“Do any of them feel more comfortable to you, Arlo?” said Myria.

I took a deep breath, shaking off the nerves and the mini internal meltdown.

“There’s a classic appeal to swords, but I’m not sure they’re for me. I think I’d need a lot of training before I could wield one without accidentally hurting myself or someone else.”

“Intrinsic skills will speed that up. Worry more about how natural it feels.”

I walked down the line of weapons I had sampled.

“Spears and polearms don’t mesh with my style. I need one hand free to cast, and Oblivion Orb is really close range. Axes are cool, but something about the way the axehead connects doesn’t feel great. Like it requires precision, but also feels clumsy. I’ve never really cared for daggers. No reach advantage and not enough stopping power. I don’t see myself going for a lot of finesse and making ‘em stick where they need to get stuck. The mace I have is pretty good. Just thunk ‘em and that’s all-she-wrote.”

I stopped in front of a single-handed war hammer. It was three feet long, with a hammer head on one side for bashing, a curved spike on the back for piercing and grappling, and a straight spike on the end for poking. I picked it up again. The weight felt right, the reach was comfortable, the swing had a good balance, and it absolutely wrecked the barrel I had smashed it with.

“Oh no,” said Ashe, “not that one!”

“Lito would approve,” said Myria, smiling. “I can ask if he’s taking on any students.”

“We haven’t even shot any bows yet,” said Ember, pouting a little.

“Hit ‘em with the heavy end,” said Xim. “That’s the style I like, too.”

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Between Ashe, who mostly fought with one handed swords, and Xim, who had a lot of experience with blunt weapons like her own scepter, they were able to coach me through the basics. I walked through a few stances, moving the weapon in arcs and stepping into the next attack, keeping my balance as one swing flowed into another. It was a bit more graceful than I expected from a literal hammer, but I was sure there was a big difference between the gentle dance of practice forms and the gruesome reality of bashing something to death. As an added bonus, the training would transfer somewhat to my flanged mace, which would still be my primary backup since it was the only thing I had with a mana-weave.

I also asked Ember to get me started with bows, and she selected a basic longbow for me to start. It would take advantage of my strength to some degree, since the weapon had a draw-weight of a hundred pounds, as opposed to a shortbow or recurve which had a draw weight closer to sixty pounds. There were tactical considerations as well, but if I was going to use a bow at all I wanted to make sure it had some range on it.

I absolutely sucked at it, but with Ember’s coaching I could at least land the shot in one of the large barrels at thirty feet, and get sort of close to the barrel on the other end of the hundred-foot long room. I’d created the training space as a wide rectangle with target-practice in mind. It was still too short for serious distance practice, but it would take some time before I was good enough to make longshots.

I rounded out the day by having a fairly inebriated Myria show me a few Agility-related exercises focused on improving my mobility and, hopefully, helping me learn to dodge. She watched me fumble around for an hour, offering assistance here and there, then went off to find Ashe and some more booze.

Eventually everyone had left, and I was alone in the practice room doing cartwheels for the first time in my life. Before I knew it, I had a new System message.

Congratulations! By learning how to hit the broadside of a barn with a bow and spending several hours learning grade-school playground tricks, you have earned +1 to AGI.

I smiled at the notification and decided it was time to take a break. My stomach kindly reminded me that I hadn’t eaten anything since breakfast, and when I went above deck the sun was already setting.

Captain Mot was happy to serve us a hot meal wherever we chose to take it, so Nuralie, Xim, and I sat right on the deck near the bow of the ship with a few crate lids stacked atop one another to serve as our table. The food was a wild game bird whose name I forgot the moment I took a bite. I decided it was near enough to turkey to have earned the designation in my mind.

Along with the turkey were a few rooty vegetables cooked in broth with some citrus fruit mixed in. It was served with warm brown-bread and a light ale that was only mildly alcoholic, then followed up with some soft candied berries with lightly sweetened jam wrapped up in a flakey tortilla. A sort of dessert burrito, which was something I didn’t know I was missing out on my entire life until I bit into one.

After the meal and conversation, I leaned back, setting my hands on the deck behind me and letting my head tilt up toward the sky. The sun had long since set and the stars were bright and plentiful. Several clusters glowed in a variety of primary colors, looking like a galactic sized lite-brite set. I didn’t know much about astrophysics, but I was pretty sure stars didn’t normally come in such a vivid array of hues. Then again, maybe they weren’t stars. Maybe the planet was surrounded by a big shiny net that the gods had strung arena-sized Christmas lights along.

The banks of the river swept gently up into sandy hills that met the bases of large cliffs that rose several stories high into the air on either side. The river once featured several notable waterfalls, but earth-shaper mages had taken it upon themselves to level the riverbed out to allow for easier passage via watercraft. The cliffs above were the original shores of the river, and we would travel between them until we reached the Chovali colony, whatever that was. I hadn’t asked because I would find out soon enough, and if I asked every time I had a question, no one would ever finish explaining anything to me.

In the skies above, a creature like a massive, floating manta ray passed by far overhead. The edges of its form swayed gently, and its body produced a bioluminescent glow. A long tail trailed behind it, looking deceptively large as it left a wave of spectral haze in its wake. It was beautiful, and I decided to find out more about it when I got the chance.

“Hey, Xim?” I said.

“Yeah?” she said through a mouthful of burrito dessert. Burssert? Dessito?

No. It was a Dessurito.

She was on her third.

“When I was talking to Seinnador, he told me that the way my eyes changed after joining the tribe was the mark of a god, or an organ of a god, or an organ that was also a god. Know anything about that?”

“Oh, sure. That makes sense. We never gave you the talk did we?”

“I’m assuming not the one about the birds and the bees because I learned all that from MTV back in the late nineties.”

“Uh-huh. No, my dad usually takes the lead on sharing the history of our tribe and its beliefs with members who join from outside the tradition. It’s a pretty involved series of lessons, so I think he was waiting until you visited the Third Layer. Better environment for an orientation, anyway.”

“But the deal with the eyes wasn't something I needed to know about before then?”

Xim rubbed her hands together to dislodge the crumbs, then leaned in and squinted at my eyes. It was dark, and the cliffs blocked part of the sky, but she was still clearly visible under the starlight. Still, my eyes were black. I couldn’t imagine there was much to see.

“They mentioned it to me, but manifesting a physical trait isn’t the same as getting a blessing. Plenty of the tribe receive transformations that never manifest into anything greater. Even if you do, it can take awhile. Why? Have you noticed a change with your vision?”

“I don’t even know what kind of changes to look out for.”

“The Eye of Sam’lia sees, reveals, and embraces,” Xim said in a didactic tone with one finger in the air, marking each word like an attentive professor. It sounded like something she’d heard many times before. “A blessing from the Eye can carry an aspect from any of these three qualities.”

I nodded and waited for her to continue.

“Seeing is pretty obvious,” she said, returning to her normal cadence. “Being able to see things that others cannot, or seeing things in a different way. Like being able to perceive the flow of mana through a mana-woven object, or even a living organism. Or something simpler like night vision.”

“The nights are pretty bright here already. I guess with cloud cover or in a forest it…” Xim was giving me one of her enthusiastic smiles.

“How bright is it, mister ‘I don’t know what changes to look out for’?”

I ignored the jab and peered around the deck.

“I don’t know. Obviously not as bright as it is during the day, but I can make out most things. Look, I don’t know. Where I come from…” I stopped myself, remembering that Nuralie wasn’t in on the Secret. “I figured nights here were just bright. I didn’t know it might be from some special magic eyeballs I got from a ritual.”

“Can you see the cliffs?” asked Xim. “Not just the tops where they block the sky, but the faces.”

“Yeah. Can you?”

“Oh, sure. How about you, Nuralie?”

Pause.

“Yes. Sort of.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Nuralie’s a Loson. They’ve lived in swamps with canopies that block out the sky for eons. All of them can see pretty well in the dark. In the Third Layer the day-night cycle works… differently than it does here in the First. Most of us native to the Third have some level of night-vision. But I bet if you ask any of the Hiwardians here they’d say it was a pretty dark night, and none of them would be able to see the cliffs unless they’re augmented by something. Like a Delver skill or some other magic.”

“Ok, so maybe I have better sight in the dark because of the eyes. Or maybe Hiwardians have naturally bad eyesight. I’m not Hiwardian, so I don’t have much of a baseline there.”

Xim shrugged.

“That’s true.”

Still, I liked the idea of seeing in the dark. When I thought about it, I hadn’t ever been in an environment I found to be truly dark since I left the Delve.

“So what about the other two categories?”

“‘Reveals’ is a sort of extension of the first, but there’s some nuance. It not only lets you see things that others cannot, but also lets you see through things that otherwise shouldn’t be there.”

“What? Like illusions?”

“Yes, but that’s a pretty concrete example. There are stories of those who could also reveal things like lies, or divine accurate information from sources that were faulty. More of an intangible reveal. Beyond that, revealing also allows you to reveal what you see to others.”

“Right there in the name, I guess. Not sure if I’ve revealed anything so far.”

“Something to think about, then. As for the third, the Eye ‘embraces’ by imparting a portion of its own domain onto all those it sees.”

“It does what now?”

“I probably could have said that better. For example, the Eye is how we travel to and from the Third Layer. All of the Third Layer lies under the gaze of the Eye and everything under the gaze of the Eye lies within the Third Layer. To step into the First, we beseech the Eye to turn away from us. When we wish to return to the Third, we ask it to look upon us again.”

“That’s kind of creepy, no offense. I mean, it’s creepy in a cool way. Or, that is, things other people find creepy I find cool a lot of times. Except for creepy things like people being creepy in a pervy kind of way. So I don’t find it creepy, except in a cool way. Shit, just ignore all statements I’ve made in the last ten seconds. It seems neat. The Eye does neat things.”

Xim laughed.

“Don’t worry, I get it. As far as what embracing can do for a person gifted by the Eye, it varies. I’ve heard stories of people who could create a sort of domain that they could will other people into. The person affected would still be visible and exist to everyone outside of the domain, but the laws of reality might become distorted for that person. Like never-ending hallways, or stairs that always take you to the same floor no matter how many times you climb them. Every pebble on the ground appearing as large as a mountain, though you could still step on them without growing any larger.”

“That sounds like dream logic. That’s also a very scary ability. And not in an ‘I think scary things are cool’ kind of way. Legitimately scary.”

“It’s very rare, if anyone has ever actually had that ability. I’ve only heard legends.”

“Well, if I ever accidentally create a mind-warping dreamscape and abduct unwitting victims into it, I’ll let you know.” My mind turned uneasily to the Pocket Delve. “As far as seeing things others can’t…” I reached down and drew my amulet from beneath my armor.

Traveler’s Amulet

This is an evolving item.

Current Level: Crumb-Cruncher

Effects:

1: It’s stylish.

2: Soul-Sight: You can perceive the strength of the souls around you. This effect is set to the lowest setting by default. You can intensify it by concentrating, but be careful. Some souls are better seen from a distance.

Make “Soul-Sight” your own to unlock this amulet’s next effect.

Would the Eye’s gift let me unlock the next ability for this amulet?