Ethria- the Pioneer

by Aaron Holloway

  “Well, Kiertoss is all about home, hearth, warmth, and family. She’s the Goddess of the crafts, science, and music. She usually prefers sacrifices of artistic pieces of work or barring that a good chicken will suffice. She likes chicken.”

  “Really? That seems kind of random.”

  “Yeah, both of them have become a bit eclectic over the years as other members of their pantheon have either moved on, died, or gone into hibernation, forcing them to take on the duties left vacant by the others.” I nodded, they got left holding the bag as other people jumped ship or died. I’d been in that position before, It freaking sucked.

  “And the other guy? Korvus?”

  Ailsa buzzed her wings again lifting off the ground and touching back down. I didn’t know what that meant. “He’s, he's a bit odd now. He had to sacrifice a lot of himself over the years to keep things going and protect Kiertoss from deteriorating. He is the God of justice, war, farming, forests, the hunt, basically think anything masculine or muscle-based in general and you’d have a safe bet he’s in charge of it. He likes chickens too, but what would probably be best for him is a good old fashioned book burning on an altar. The guy needs some of his smarts back, and fast.”

  I thought about it for a moment and then asked for Ailsa to get out my bag from her extradimensional pocket. When she produced the massive travel pack, I immediately started rummaging around in it for something I had put in the bag for after Donny and I had finished clearing the dungeon.

  “Ha!” I said and raised my prize triumphantly.

  “What is it? It looks uncomfortable.” Ailsa said as she floated up to get a better look at the object.

  “Oh, it is. Reading this thing the first time was awkward as I had to do it with a physical copy I could take notes in. I was going to read the digital copy in-game because it would have been so much more convenient. I was going to write my entrance paper to my master's program based on some of the information in here.” I said thumping the cover.

  “Constitution-Making In The Region Of The Former Soviet Dominance by Ludwikowski.” I sighed with contentment. “I first read this beast for a comparative constitutionalism class, and it was, well if I said it was both boring and fascinating at the same time, would you believe me?” She shook her head indignantly. “Well, it was for me. The lessons learned from the history and documents discussed in it will help anyone understand human behavior better. But it's really dense reading, do you think he has faculties enough to actually read it?”

  “He's still a God meathead, he can probably hear what we’re saying about him right now.” Ailsa buzzed her wings at me and rested back down on the ground.

  “Well, either way, it will be a bit of bonus catharsis for me to watch this thing as it burns,” I asked Ailsa to retrieve a dead chicken from one of the elves, as I prepared the fire pit. While I did, I talked to the big guy upstairs. After opening the prayer properly I said “I hope you don’t think this is blasphemy. I mean, you’re the one who wanted me to come here in the first place to help these guys, right?

  “Anyway, thank you for letting everything work out so far. It's been fun getting to know these people, but, I am worried about my family back home. I know that guy in the suit said they were going to be safe, at least from any accidents with the pods, but please watch out for them if you can.” I thanked him and closed in the name of Christ just as I finished making the pit.

  I admit It wasn’t the most pious of prayers, but if the big guy upstairs could understand anything we insects down here went through, I’m sure he could understand a weak little mortal’s desire to play with fire. Not just any fire, but magic fire!

  Promising myself to do better with my nightly prayers, something that I hadn’t kept up since coming to Ethria, I put the last stone in place and stood. My laps was mainly because I was usually working through the night, passing out, or near death, but still. The inability to attain perfection is no excuse for lack of effort. That isn’t a scriptural quote or anything, just a personal motto.

  It basically means we should try, strive to improve ourselves, even if it's only with little things here and there. Improvement, not perfection as the more popular saying goes.

  Ailsa returned just as I finished with the pit, with a large plate full of chicken, each piece was cooked in a different style. Some marinated, some deep-fried, or whatever equivalent there was on Ethria, some of them were breaded and THEN deep-fried. I have to admit I was tempted to take one “Where did you get that?” I asked mouth-watering.

  “A chef was passing through, apparently the elven God of luck is pleased with you.” She smirked as she placed the tray of chicken into the pit on top of the book. “Alright, do your thing, fire mage.”

  I breathed in, and then out clearing my mind of any thought except passion. I poured in my frustrations, my anxieties, and the still not fully understood emotions I had for Lisander. When I opened my eyes again, the world hung in a kind of red haze. I reached out a hand and ripped a hole in the haze aimed directly at the pit. Suddenly all of the haze forced its way into that single point on my finger where I made the hole. With a thought I released the pent-up pressure, and a jet of flame leaped from my finger and covered the pit.

  It covered the pit, and the ground around the pit, and the ground past it out in a cone for about thirty feet. I breathed in, as my Mana bar swiftly drained to about half, and the fire jet stopped. A prompt filled my vision.

  “You have successfully completed two minor religious rites for two different gods simultaneously. These gods reactions where, Positive, and Positive. Korvus is:

  ‘Grudgingly Thankful, you gave me homework.’ Kiertoss is: ‘Thankful, I was getting kind of hungry.’ As both deities are in the same pantheon, the penalty curse for mixing two sacrificial rituals is waved. Be more careful in the future, Earthling. One so weak, should not trifle with the Gods.

  The male and female voices that I had muted, read the notification together. When it got to the red highlighted lettering, the young teenager read it aloud to me, while the green and bolded text was read by the mature female voice alone.

  I opened my mouth to either say something sarcastic that would probably have gotten me in more trouble, or to ask Ailsa if the Gods could screw with my notification settings, and what the curse thing was all about; I hadn’t decided when I heard shouting from behind me.

  “HOLY SHIT!” Screamed an elf who had come to witness what we were doing, oddly one dressed in a chef’s hat. Oh, I thought. “You took the chicken from that guy, didn’t you?” Ailsa nodded and then shrugged as if it was of no consequence.

  In the distance, we could hear the man, and a bunch of other elves screaming “Fire, fire! Get the Wood Warden, get the Water Mages. Fire!” As they ran through the settlement.

  “Think you might have overdone it?” Ailsa asked sheepishly, as she hid behind me from the heat of the fire, that oddly didn’t seem to bother me much.

  I pulled up a prompt that informed me I had received the spell formally in my spell list.

  Fire Jet 1

  School/Type

  Cost

  Casting Time / Duration

  Cool Down

  Type: Fire

  30 Mana

  Instant, variable

  1 min 30 sec

  Effects

  Sends a cone of fire from the caster's fingertips for fifteen feet outwards, dealing 50 + 10 /second Fire damage. Sets anything caught in the cone a fire (damage effects already calculated). Save for 1/2 damage either Reflex or Insight check.

  Modifiers

  Damage: Intelligence, Rage Effects

  Special

  Can sustain the flame for up to 10 seconds, for an additional cost of +30 Mana a second

  I minimized it after reading it “Yeah, probably.”

  ----

  “I can’t leave you two alone for more than an hour unsupervised, can I?” Asked the same mage who had treated my wounds from the door-to-head incident about an hour ago.


  “I’ve already apologized,” I said for the hundredth time looking on as the ground that had been filled with green grass and blooming winter flowers, was now covered in still burning coals, sizzled in the light rain the woman had summoned.

  “And I've already told you, we elves take fire extremely seriously. We literally live in trees!” She said, her voice growing louder as she explained, again, why what I had done was an obviously bad, stupid, thing, so bad it was nigh unto an unpardonable sin. “If you needed to light a sacrificial fire, why not use a basin? We have them literally everywhere for this exact reason.” She pointed at several we had ignored both going from the cottage to the pond, and once we had walked right by one from the pond to where we stood now.

  “Or better yet, light it the old fashioned way with flint and steel? You have both on you, I can see it in your bag there.” I winced, she had a point. “Either would have been acceptable, instead, you just used what is essentially a young dragon's breath weapon, in an uncontrolled experiment, because you wanted to feel powerful!”

  I sighed, she was right, and there was no way around it. The spell I had chosen to do was a rather powerful one. The pyromancer whose experiences I had learned it from had been exceptionally naturally talented and had skipped a lot of smaller and weaker spells that most had to learn before they were able to develop something like Fire Jet.

  “What I did was wrong, what can I do to fix it that isn’t already being done?” I asked seriously, looking at her squarely as I said it. “Tell me, and I'll do it. I told you this was an accident, I didn’t realize how far the fire would go, and I didn’t realize just how powerful the spell would be. I thought that I could control it like I saw in the book.” She rolled her eyes at the last statement.

  “You can’t believe everything you read in a book.” She said her ire coming down a few notches. “Alright, look. The grass will regrow, and at least you were smart enough to use a wide-open clearing, and at least you tried to build a large enough fire pit. So, I'm not going to cite you or throw you in jail as long as you keep your new pyromaniac tendencies in check. Got it?” I nodded sadly. “No more fire spells IN THE FOREST!” She erupted at the very thought of the stupidity of the idea, and stormed off to circle the fire, and cool her anger as much as let her rain spell cool the coals.

  “Well, that went well, considering,” I said to Ailsa who had hidden from the tiny elf woman's fury.

  “I agree” Ailsa squeaked into my ear from under my shirt on my back where she clung.

  “Dang it!” I said as I hit my forehead realizing my stupidity.

  “What is it?”

  “I-I didn’t get her name. Again.”

  ----

  We went back to the cottage and worked together sweeping out the ash and dust, the little that I hadn’t inhaled, as we desperately tried to stay out of trouble. It was maybe four or so hours afternoon, and getting a bit shadowy. My plan was to stay indoors, behave myself, and read the rest of the day. Maybe do a bit of classy magic with Ailsa’s help if the opportunity arose. That's it, I swear that's what I intended.

  A few hours into my reading marathon, the sun was firmly casting shadows everywhere in the forest and was surely going to set in a few hours more. I had learned a bit of biomancy and the spell Cure Light Wounds, which did exactly as you would suspect it does. I got the chance to use it, and thereby add it to my spell list when Ailsa accidentally got a sliver in her wing on the unfinished grain of the cottages wooden logs. It was barely a single point of damage, but it seemed enough to bother the little fairy. I had asked if I could try the spell, and she agreed as long as she walked me through every step.

  It wasn’t that hard, it mainly required that I focus on both my empathy for the individual in question, as well as pull in my analytical mind accessing the medical knowledge I had. The spell could be cast with just one or the other, but the syncing of my will to light magic was easier with both firmly in my mind. Other types of biomancy, water biomancy for instance, required both to operate.

  When I asked Ailsa about this, she explained that while all magic operated along universal rules every type of magic broke or bypassed those rules in unique ways. Light magic unique circumvention of the rules was the fact that when casting you only needed the knowledge or empathy, not both.

  “Most biomancy requires at least some knowledge of how life works, where organs are, what blood is, that kind of thing. The more you know, the more effective a biomancy spell is going to be. Even with the light magic exception to this rule, light magic biomancy spells will be less effective without both.”

  “So, I get types of magic, they are basically the fuel, or flavor of a spell,” I said, preparing a question.

  “Well, it's more like the medium through which you are casting a spell, but your analogy is fine for now.” Ailsa corrected.

  “Fine, but what is a school of magic? You mentioned that biomancy is a school, but what are schools?”

  Ailsa fluttered her wings slightly before speaking. “Schools of Magic are based on personal knowledge about the world around us. Biomancy, for instance, is based around a person's knowledge about how the body of their subject works. The more you know, the more efficient your spells use of mana is going to be in that given School of Magic. The more you know about the body and life in general, the more efficient your biomanctic spells of any kind are going to be.”

  “Okay, I think I got it. Can I try Cure Light Wounds now?” I asked growing slightly annoyed at the delay to me gaining a new spell.

  “Sure, just follow everything I've told you. You screw a biomancy spell up, and I could grow a third wing, or worse.”

  The light grew around my hands and then dissipated as the mana infused the tiny injured wing. “Ah, that feels better,” Ailsa said as she sat down on the table behind the book I had laid out in front of me. I had been reading about a theory called “etheric density” which I was just starting to wrap my head around when I heard shouting from outside my door.

  “What's that?” I asked Ailsa, and she hovered over to peer out the window.

  “Oh no,” Ailsa said as she peered through the top of the window. “That elf from earlier is fighting with someone. Looks like its getting heated.” I stood up to get a better look out the window. When I arrived I saw the elf fire marshal, water mage, and medic walking away as a tall, white-robed elf followed her gesturing energetically and shouting just loud enough for me to hear there was an argument, but not loud enough for me to understand what was being said from the other side of the clearing.

  Red-faced, the tall white-robed elf grabbed the fire marshal on the arm and spun her around harshly. “Maybe we should intervene,” I said hesitantly. “Looks like its getting pretty heated.”

  “Yeah, there are only a few other elves around,” Ailsa said. “Most of them look like their leaving or can't really see what's going on. Maybe we should go over and see if we can help.” As Ailsa said this, the woman slapped the skinny man across the face, the noise of the slap echoed across the clearing.

  “I left you to protect her from you, you spoiled brat!” The woman screamed, before raising another hand, which the male elf caught.

  “Okay time to step in.” I turned towards the door and heard a loud cracking noise. I turned back and saw the man had backhanded her across the jaw, and knocked the elf woman unconscious.

  Ailsa was out the window before I was out the door. I didn’t know what was going on but whatever it was, it needed to de-escalate quickly. The look that guy gave fire marshal lady was murderous, I thought as I bounded down the steps.

  Large guys don’t really run very well, even when we try it ends up being more like awkward jogging. Doesn’t matter how fit the large guy is either, it's always weird and never very efficient. As I lobbed along at my awkward top speed, Ailsa took the clear lead. A few other elves from the fringes of the clearing also moved to intervene in the incident, but they were much further away than either of us were.

  As I got closer, I
could see the man had tears streaming down his face and was shouting at fire marshal lady as she attempted to get back to her feet, having just regained consciousness. “I can’t believe it, you slept with him, I can’t believe it, you filthy bitch!”

  He kicked her in the ribs and sent her hurdling into a nearby tree. “You betrayed me, you hurt me! Twice now, you have done so! The first time, I overlooked your betrayal and the little brat that came from it. But not this time. Guess what whore! You’re going to hurt now!”

  Ailsa let out a stream of small but potent electric balls from her hand, that slammed into a shield that protected the two and dissipated into nothing. Ailsa stopped short of the shield and summoned another ball of force, that was also eaten by it.

  I growled and put my hand on the barrier and pushed testing it, even as he kicked her for the third time. I heard bones crack and break. “You want his baby? Is that it? You want to replace me, and our son with someone new? Was corrupting our daughter not enough for you?! You have to have a filthy half-breed instead of true born high-elven blood? Well guess what?! I’m not going to let you!”

  I saw the few elves who were headed towards the dispute, pick up their pace when the man started yelling, mirroring Ailsa and I. The jilted lover was a high elf, more than likely a member of Salina’s retinue. “I saw you with him, the way you stared at him. The way you fawned over him. That filthy human!” I was stunned at the realization of what I was seeing.

  This elf had grown jealous of my time with his supposed sweetheart because she was running around cleaning up my messes all day. I felt rage boil over inside, as I grabbed a star and shot it at the barrier. The shield rippled slightly but otherwise didn’t respond. I did it again, and then again, every time the cooldown timer reached zero.