Artorian's Archives Omnibus

by Dennis Vanderkerken

  The Elves all swallowed. “We…”

  They were trying to say something difficult. “For what you did… for Sequoia. Thank you, Artorian.”

  “If we had all had someone like you in final moments like those, the Wood Elven will to fight would not be as pathetic as it currently is. Many saw through Rosewood’s eyes that day. The cries of vindication that roared through the forest were felt by all that carry nature’s power.” Artorian deduced several things from these words.

  One: ‘Nature’s Power’ was a mixture of the four elemental Essence types. This excluded celestial and the one he’d never been able to classify: infernal.

  Two: naming conventions were inconvenient. Just call him by his name! Why did it have to be whispered, and even then only on special occasions?

  Thr… hmm. “Haw, why is nobody willing to openly use my chosen name? It happens on occasion and then people… Elves, clamp up.”

  Discomfort rolled through his cheerleader squad as if they had tasted over-salted soup. “Oh. We… we only use chosen names when we are being intimate, or wish to express a significant and sincere emotion or praise. It is also heavily bound into our joining ceremony. You give up your personal name when joining as one, and that is a heavy act. Chosen names are almost reverent in their meaning and weight. In some parts of the forest, names carry great power.”

  Information on names of power was definitely of interest to the old Academic. Oh, if only he had vellum or paper instead of needing to rely solely on his memory. What an imperfect storage device! He pressed on: “Intriguing. You’ve captured my attention!”

  He smiled at Hawthorn as Oak and the Dwarves finally stopped playing around; it seemed the score had been thoroughly settled. Eucalyptus moved in formation and passed Artorian with an oddly cordial bow. That was strange, they’d never shown respect to him like that before. Ah! Must have been bowing to Hawthorn.

  The Dwarves looked like they were discussing peace agreement terms, and the remaining Oaks had shown up to form up with their… unique troublemaker. That meant… Artorian nodded as he realized that even Oak, the prideful separator of individualities. Was experiencing the forced unifying effect. It appeared time to go and meet some trees, so he’d need to find out more on the way.

  “Haw, are we going to a large gathering?”

  The Elves nodded and pointed at the package. “Best you change before Rosewood sees you.”

  “Best he does what before we see him, Hawthorn?” Rosewood’s stern tone rang out from behind the cheerleading group.

  Hawthorn smiled at Artorian, gave him a pat, and left him to fend for himself. “Come find us when you’re… done!”

  Artorian could have sworn he heard the sound of a teakettle. Something about Rosewood’s expression just created that image in his head. He wasn’t upset at Haw for running off. Mainly because there was a hierarchy amongst Wood Elves that he hadn’t really pinned down, but clearly Rosewood was up there in rank. Artorian sighed and faced the group of livid Elves.

  “Alright. I’m done with the farce. Rosewood, what is my modeling worth to you? I am burdened with trying to make cultivation progress, and the frequent interruptions you create are getting on my nerves. I’ve been letting you design your clothes on me, without complaints or wiggles. What’s the issue? I’m tired of seeing you glare at me for something you knew was going to happen, and I’m not spending the next few years here constantly dealing with a child’s tantrum.”

  The Elven designers were taken aback. They’d expected the High Human to fuss a little and go along with the fun as usual. They pondered amongst themselves. On one branch, it was no fun that their inherent position was being undermined. On the other… it might be easier to have his actual cooperation.

  Rosewood came to a decision. “Four rotations. We want four years of your time where we get to apply our art. This is so that when it becomes important, we have wares the northerners will trade for. In turn, we will gift you what we know about design and the techniques of our nature’s power. Since we already agreed through Mahogany that we would gift you techniques, I can only put the rest of it on the table.”

  This arrangement was a sizable cost for both of them, and Artorian treated it with the care that it deserved. “I’m going to have to think about that Rosewood… I’m also not certain what you mean by gifting me the techniques. Did you perchance mean to teach me?”

  Shaking their heads ‘no’, they puzzled to find a human-appropriate explanation. “Perhaps it is best to show you? We owe you a technique regardless. Come press your head to ours. Any gestalt mind can commence the gifting.”

  Artorian blinked a few times. Now he was the one who wasn’t following what was happening. His academic curiosity forced him into ill-advised action as he stepped forth, package still in hand. Not quite certain of what to do, he leaned his forehead in. “Like that?”

  The Elves chuckled, amused at his antics. “It will do.”

  Rosewood leaned her Elves forward, and one of them touched their forehead to Artorian’s. Visually, nothing happened. The old man worried a moment that this was another joke. An intense feeling began when he considered pulling back.

  Like waking from slumber where the dreams you lived follow into the start of your waking day, so too did this dream envelop his thoughts.

  It was a crisp spring. Lilac bloomed in excess. Artorian looked down and saw his hands, but they were Elven. The digits worked to flow and weave between warm petals. He felt surging emotion as their hands brushed across oceans of flowers. The empathy was hard to place, but he felt unique affection for the plants in the form of a deep and lavish love.

  The experience was profound, felt on a level of intimacy mimicking only his experience of memory stones. Actually, that’s exactly what it felt like, but without the lack of clarity and protection from other experiences that occurred at the time. No, this was everything. The full, raw, unfiltered memory as it happened in the moment.

  He witnessed firsthand—as if he was doing it—every dancing motion and strain of Essence being manipulated in ways he’d never conceived of. The art of clothing, tended and strung by the tender connectivity of leaves and petals as Essence linked particles together to form a tapestry of beauty.

  Artorian lived the experience, and finally understood the passion in Rosewood’s craft. Her work was a labor of love, and she wished only for further growth in the tapestry of art she could weave. She dreamed of a world where everyone dressed in her heartfelt creations.

  The old man blinked as he came back to reality without any warning. “Was… no memory stone? Just… I saw it all. Felt it all.”

  Rosewood seemed proud that she’d stunned the wordy academic. He was standing frozen in time, coping with all the knowledge he’d just gained on fine Essence manipulation, using a type of Essence that he didn’t even have access to.

  “Oh, those little rocks that hold a few incoherent thoughts?” Her smile morphed into a rich, pleased grin at his fast-nodding reaction. “We invented those.”

  Rosewood’s laugh rose to Dwarven levels due to the academic having such a dumb look plastering his face. Her comfort must have risen significantly, because each of her Elves giggled as individuals, not hard-bound to their unity. So, it wasn’t necessary for the hookah to be used? Perhaps it was just a helping measure, but not the prime factor?

  When Artorian found the will to pick his jaw back up from the grass, he didn’t know what to say. Luckily, Rosewood kept talking. “I waited for the merchants to be out of ears reach, have no fear there. They did not overhear. Mahogany has expressed clearly that when it comes to clearing the blight from our lives, no price is too great. Have you been told why the traders are here? I am vaguely aware of other events, Haw passed me some memories through the roots.”

  She blinked, and all of Rosewood’s Elves rubbed their foreheads. “Your shortname for him. It is infectious.”

  The old man came to his senses and replied with a lush smile. “Convenience is made to be
infectious.”

  His hand habitually returned to his beard, stroking it as he mulled over all he’d just learned. He needed a nap to process all this. How he missed beds… stealing a glance over his shoulder, he noted one Dwarf had remained behind and was prodding at a diamond sculpture. Oh, that was Ember. “Master Dwarf! I’d halt such explorations if I were you. You’re deeply infringing upon her honor!”

  The Dwarf, dressed in prospector’s gear and sporting one hefty gear-shaped monocle, leered over his shoulder. The firebeard made a ‘go away’ motion to the old man who was needlessly shouting at him over some nonsense. There was a crystalline sculpture here just ready for the taking. Someone would pay a hefty… *Urk*!

  Furaam had been held by the throat many times in his life. So far, he’d even lived through all of them. As head-inspector and appraiser of wares, he sported a bulbous nose that was exceptional at sniffing out goods that had value. However, not once in the history of his career had he been accosted by the object he’d been appraising so… directly.

  Traps and lures, certainly! The arm of the sculpture snapping to lift you by the gullet? Not an event he’d be interested in repeating. Note to self, listen to strange half-naked old men in woods that give you advice about someone’s honor. Against all better judgement, somehow that was the right thing to do.

  “Artorian.” A milky-translucent Ember was back to her laconic way of speaking.

  “Morning, Ember. How are you feeling?”

  The diamond and quartz figure didn’t move like one. Her movements were fluid and flawless, as though fashioned from some kind of gel that kept a considerably harder material in a fluid state. She was a marvel! Artorian wondered what the Essence pattern of a Mage looked like, and cycled Essence into his eyes to answer his curiosity. Why had he never tried that before?

  Ah. Because it was a terrible mistake. Nausea clawed him like a cat that had decided it was done being pet, and he was used to a system that sprawled with three-dimensional movement. Sickened, he bent over and heaved.

  Ember clicked her diamond tongue, her voice the inner echo of a cave. “I feel like someone threw me through the planet and I came out the other side. Where is Oak, and who is this… what am I holding?”

  She dropped Furaam like a filthy rag, sneering at her hand like she needed to wipe it on something. The prospector landed on his feet, braced, tipped his hat, and ran for his life in short order. Artorian could see the Essence grip his feet were making on the ground with his improperly reeled-back sight. He didn’t catch it all, but it appeared like earth Essence talons dug into the ground and added leverage to ‘pull’ as the Dwarf blitzed past him. Could that be applied to the other Essences? Likely!

  “Well, in short, that was a merchant Dwarf. It’s been a few days, the Elves gathered up for safety, Oak is a pain in the keister trickster, and I just learned Wood Elves are the original designers of memory stones.”

  Ember blinked at him with enough effort that it seemed like that action, rather than following the debriefing, had been the more difficult task. “Understood. No wonder my hand feels dirty.”

  Artorian drew in a sharp breath through his nose as he got a hold of himself. Rosewood helped him up. Oh, classic Ember with all the curt responses. He forgot she took in information like a warrior all the time, rather than just some of the time.

  “You’re… crystalline, my dear.”

  The Fire Soul looked herself over and mouthed an ‘ah’. Realizing she was in fact still in her absorption mode. She’d used this form often in the past, but after she’d ascended, it had… never been useful again. A zenith C-rank cultivator body is flimsy in comparison to the base form of an Ascended.

  The change had been helpful for her Mana control practice which she’d deeply lost herself in, but otherwise this crystal-formed body was a downgrade. Her voice even sounded like it was echoing. She didn’t like it, and in the span of barely a minute her form physically reverted to the Ember they were all used to seeing.

  “That’s quite the control. It took you much longer to crystallize, well done!” Artorian didn’t understand any of the details of what she’d done, but there was no reason not to be supportive. Ember nodded at him, sporting grey-tinted pink flesh again. It slowly gained color, and the roots of her hair refilled with orange-red. How odd, why not restore all of herself if she had free reign?

  “I need practice. That was still too slow.”

  He tugged his own beard by accident. Perhaps… she didn’t have free reign. There was always more to learn. Yes, always more to learn.

  Artorian turned on a dime, and extended his hand towards Rosewood. He understood what he was in for; nearly all the other Elves were coming to join the party. Or rather, huddle under his protective dome which was going to be assailed non-abyss-bloody-stop. He needed help, and lots of it.

  There was just too much to do, and the snippets of knowledge he kept sipping on were like the cheap drinks at an open bar. He needed more, including better information and abilities. Four years of modeling was a heavy cost, but he wasn’t doing anyone any good the way he was right now. For all he knew, it would take all four of those years just to control his Essence properly. “I accept. Four years.”

  They shook on it, which turned out to be a mistake.

  One. Day. It took the academic one day after making the deal with Rosewood, for an Elven memory from Pine to show him exactly how to use his Aura as an intermediary, rather than the body. Not only had it been such an obvious step that he’d completely overlooked, it was easy. His control remained at the level of hookah-assist so long as he had a minor pull now and then, and the speed at which he let Essence flow blasted past his previous physical limitations.

  He felt like such a fool. A happy fool, certainly, since he felt the streaming waves of Essence course across the outer layer of his skin rather than inside, but a fool nonetheless. Artorian meditated in the grove, clad in Rosewood’s latest design as he entertained meet-and-greets with visiting families of Wood Elves. He hadn’t expected them to like him as much as they seemed to, but couldn’t help but enjoy that they were incredibly cordial.

  Lots of High Human this, High Human that. The Dwarves turned out to be a northern based trading caravan that came through Oak’s grove once a rotation. They had… decent relations. They bought sundry goods that Wood Elves specialized in, and sold surprisingly mundane items. All the things one would ordinarily expect in a more human household. Spoons especially—when wrought of metal—were in crazy demand, and nobody would tell him why.

  Days turned into weeks, and those weeks melted into seasons. Artorian’s life became a rote, repetitive jumble of failure and learning. He needed several weeks to cope with a memory implant anytime a gestalt mind shared one with him. It wasn’t the mechanical content of the abilities shared that tripped him up, it was all the extra baggage they contained.

  The crude memory rock that had given him his initial stepping stones to begin cultivation had far fewer personal touches. You got some imprints of emotion, and topics not kept in focus blurred at the edges. A memory stone got to the point without much fuss. Intermedium attained memories felt like they were over in a moment, but direct linking wasn’t nearly as gentle.

  It didn’t feel like moments as one experienced it. The process might take mere moments to complete, but involved one severe headache as side effect. Each memory was lived out in full, painstaking detail. Every nick, bump, and cut in the process of learning was felt. Every emotion directly present. Each sound was audible and every iota of the experience was vivid. Direct linking with memory share wasn’t just gaining a new memory from someone else. You lived those moments yourself.

  Months of time were dedicated to recovery alone. Without a clear head, he couldn’t do anything with his Essence. Memory lessons needed focus to progress. Aside from rest and cultivation, he just didn’t have the spoons after a wallop like that.

  Ah. He had also finally found out why the cutlery was in demand. Memory shares had to
be carefully balanced and timed with the incoming waves of Phantom Blight. When they came, they now did so en masse. The tarry haze swallowed up landscapes and collapsed in on their position, attempting again and again to break the invisible dome of omnidirectional starlight. Ember’s flame corralled the shapeless muck like hapless sheep while Artorian remained set on holding his Aura steady. Together, they forced the wailing dark into the lances she’d learned how to see.

  Artorian’s Aura wasn’t perfect, and that weapon stunt of his had done some severe damage. When the external Aura returned, it hadn’t properly latched back on to his being, resulting in fairly obvious rips that leaked Essence without him knowing. Had he not been under the careful watch of so many Elves, it might have gone unnoticed for years.

  Instead—when time was available—resources had gone to building and infusing his external Aura since he needed it to do more than what it currently could. Sure, he was using significantly advanced concepts such as identity skewing—ideas that cultivators apparently didn’t pick up until the late Mage ranks—but that in no way balanced out the severe lack of basics.

  Blight was a crafty thing. Even if they could never pin down the real source, the phantoms didn’t keep to a set pattern and continually attempted to catch them unaware. That all the Wood Elves were gathered in one spot had altered the tactics it used. Unfortunately for the gluttonous bugger, since the festival of unity… the Blight had gained no further ground.

  Phantoms found no foothold under myriad joined Wood Elven techniques, which made life ever more irritating for the surly cloud. False minds, tricked locations, mental echoes to confuse it, and a myriad of other sleight-of-hand foolery. When combined with the starlight Aura, they ate chunks out of the swindled mass’s mental wellbeing each time it launched a misinformed assault.