Smart Alec in the Dark Lands

by Donald Wigboldy

  The bright blue reptilian eyes looked at the trees and answered, "They have never been known to climb, but then again I have never heard of hollows working together enough to throw their fellows over a shield wall before either. If they have somehow evolved enough to think things through, like figuring out how to defeat the wall; then perhaps the trees could become a different sort of danger.

  "We have captured some of these hollows over the years and there have even been experiments with the fruits of these trees. The hallucinogen doesn't affect them or the sleep fruit of the Cysgu either. The burning fruits will harm them, but likely too slowly to stop them from passing through the trees, I fear. So if they could climb, we would need a dome of shields to repel them."

  "So do you think that we should retreat from here to somewhere more defensible with Shaelamee unconscious?" Alec asked still worrying over the possibility of the trees letting an enemy circumvent the defenses by simply going over them again.

  "I think that we are safe enough for now. If she doesn't wake by mid afternoon, maybe it would be wise; but for now I think we aren't in any real danger. Even if they do attack, I have seen you use your magic. We should be capable of driving them away as we have multiple times already."

  Alec heard the dragaoin's confidence, but his words also sparked another question. "Some of your spells and Shaelamee's are completely new to me. Do you happen to have a spell book that I might study? Your schools must be full of new magic. If I could keep learning while I am away from my people, I might be able to bring the spells back for others to learn."

  Lifting a silver covered brow looking a bit confused, Helios pronounced, "I can try to teach you some of what I know, but I have no books either with me or back at the fort."

  "Then how did you learn such amazing spells? You can fly and both of you seem to know how to move great distances without using a portal that travels through other dimensions like the storm gate. Surely you had to study to learn these kinds of magic."

  Giving the boy an appraising look, Helios answered, "You sound like Nadron. He digs through books looking for new spells all the time too. I've never been a big one for reading through those dusty old books." He paused before continuing. Alec remained quiet having a feeling that the dragaoin had more to say. Surely the creature wasn't a wilder just stumbling into new spells. He had too much control in Alec's limited opinion.

  "Not every magic user gains new magic the same way. I am sure you know this."

  "Our wizards are primarily sorted by the elements that they can learn easiest. There are also healers and those best at using spells that work on the mind. Do you mean something like that?"

  "Do all those wizards study books like you wish to?" Helios asked in turn.

  "Most though there are those we call wilders that stumble into their magic. Those often become dangerous as their power increases. I think that most figure out their magic because the elements nearly control them. The kinds of spells they can do can also erupt without their intention.

  "I have heard a few that say spells are as much study as being able to will or wish it into existence, but I study to learn new ones."

  Helios' large blue eyes looked upward at the trees directly before him and seemed to glaze over slightly in thought. When he spoke, the dragaoin sounded distant and distracted. "When I was young, many Zmaj around my age started calling me No Face. Names among my people can be decided by an individual and other times they can be given. I chose the surname Noface embracing the insult making it part of me.

  "As I grew older, I noticed that I had powers. Many Zmaj have the ability to summon breath weapons. They need to recharge between uses, but even those without magic might be able to do that. I found that I could not only breathe out an ice wind capable of freezing enemies, but I could control the air with magic. I could cast magic in different ways and even now I find that on occasion I can figure out new spells.

  "My theory is that we are descended from dragons. They were magical. Some even say that they created magic sowing it on a variety of worlds.

  "If we... I... am a descendant of dragons; then perhaps my magic comes from that source."

  "So you are just naturally capable of creating spells or controlling magic in the ways that you do because you are at least part dragon?" the boy asked trying to sum up what Helios had just said.

  Nodding, the dragaoin added, "Wizards like Nadron think that I am insane. There have been others like me in ability, but the wizards usually try to say that we have wild magic like you said. I have always had great control unlike that kind of wizard. They need to be trained by wizards. My kind learn by using magic and letting it grow. Using our imaginations to build upon the basics we either stumble upon or are shown by other wizards, we discover the magic inherent in us.

  "Some choose to call us sorcerers instead of using wizard. I am not sure if it translates for you properly, but they are different."

  Alec looked at the blue girl sleeping so peacefully. One bare leg had escaped from beneath the blanket after she had rolled onto her side. "Is Shaelamee like you then or like me?"

  "Shae is something else, if I understand her correctly."

  "What do you mean?"

  "While I hope to learn more about myself as I draw out new magic to prove that I am a child of dragons, Shaelamee... she seems to be similar, yet very different. I have heard her say that she has visions and in these she is sometimes taught new spells."

  "She learns magic in her sleep?" Alec looked at the dragaoin in confusion.

  Shrugging the inquisitive young wizard off, Helios replied, "She can probably explain it better than I. If I understand it correctly, Shae seems to commune with some ancestor or perhaps a being on another plane of existence. There is a connection between them and through that Shaelamee learns new spells."

  He looked at the girl looking for a physical connection extending from her sleeping form. There was nothing unusual about her magic to his sight. Like most wizards or even Helios, she held her power inside giving off an aura that magic users could see if they were good at visual attunement.

  Alec had never heard of magic being bestowed on another being like this. Perhaps other beings had ways, but nothing like it was in the books he had read or ever even heard of in any way.

  Only time and Shaelamee's reawakening might give him more answers, the young wizard realized. Still Alec hoped that he could figure out a way to learn the spells of these two magic users in the future.

  It was nearing midday and those on guard were considering pulling up camp to move to a more defensible position when Shaelamee suddenly awoke. She rolled out of her blanket, but held it over her shoulders as the girl sleepily wandered to the opposite side of the camp from the salamanders. Squatting, she relieved herself before walking back towards the men with a yawn.

  "What did I miss?" she asked.

  Alec thought that her eyes still looked glazed over and moved towards her looking at her face. When he moved his hand to touch her forehead, Shaelamee drew back confused by the gesture at first before letting it happen. She felt cool to his touch, but warmer than earlier when they had ridden together. Her skin was also surprisingly dry.

  Running his fingers threw her hair made the girl close her eyes as if she enjoyed being touched like that. It was also dry.

  "You were hit by Cyffuriau fruit. The juice made you hallucinate, I assume, before you passed out."

  "You fell into his arms," Helios added sounding amused by the thought.

  The girl's cheeks darkened, which was more obvious since she was paler than normal as she tried to recover from the poison. Ignoring that, Shae replied, "The colors were out of alignment. It was almost like looking through a kaleidoscope. Even your clouds looked much brighter."

  Her green eyes looked towards the dragaoin with the last before returning them to the taller boy still standing in front of her. "How many hours did we lose?" she asked sounding less curious about it than he would have been, Alec thought.

 
"It is mid afternoon," Alec responded. "We were just talking about carrying you back to the lake. You are unusually dry... and you look pale. Well, a paler blue than normal, I assume that is bad."

  "I am thirsty," Shae answered without actually giving him any new knowledge.

  "Here," Helios said tossing her a canteen filled with water. The girl caught it with both hands and the blanket dropped to the ground. Her hands looked small on the container. Opening it, Shaelamee began to drink thirstily.

  Alec took a step back concentrating on her face and seeing if the moisture returned to her hair. It was also the safest place for his eyes, but strangely the boy found that he wasn't blushing this time. Perhaps it was just his worry over her that helped him avoid embarrassment or the fact that he had needed to tend to her in her hour of need. Whatever the reason, Alec was glad that he wasn't playing into her teasing ways for once.

  Still holding onto the canteen with one hand, the blue girl knelt down to pick up the blanket again. It was still wet and, as Shaelamee held onto it; she concentrated her magic pulling the moisture upward to her hand. Drying it out very quickly, he thought only her left arm glistened again with moisture even so.

  "If you don't get enough water, will you get sick?" Alec asked sounding worried which made her smile at him with new warmth. She still looked worn down and pale, but there was still plenty of life in her.

  "I am not a fish, Alec. I will be fine."

  She pressed the blanket to her chest letting it drape down the front of her blocking enough of her body to make it easier on the boy showing her so much attention. "My skin might become itchy, but like most who breathe air I live on land just fine. I need water to survive just as much as I assume you do, but I don't have to be soaked all the time.

  "I do also have a trick that I can use. It is a bit odd, but if I should grow too dry I can cast a spell on myself that lasts awhile." She waved the hand with the canteen and added, "But I only need to do that if I am really uncomfortable and there is no way to get more water. With magic, there are other sources around though."

  Handing the canteen to Alec after another quick drink, the girl twirled her finger to make him turn around a moment. Hearing her walk away seconds later, Alec couldn't help turning around to see the blanket tied around her like someone wrapping themselves with a towel after a bath. He felt a little disappointed oddly enough despite all his requests to see her clothed appropriately.

  The blanket was open to the side, he noticed, as she walked towards a tree opposite the danger of the purple Cyffuriau fruit. Chanting a short spell, the girl pointed her hand with spread fingers towards the tree over the fence about a few feet above her hand. Alec could see moisture form on the leaves before it descended to her outstretched arm.

  Turning to the left and right, Shaelamee drained moisture from two more trees in turn. The leaves closest to her shriveled a bit and some turned brown, but overall he guessed that no real damage had been done to them. Of course, if it was a matter of hurting a tree in opposition to Shaelamee becoming sick or worse; Alec supposed that he would side with the girl.

  A little chuckled grunt was missed by the others as the young wizard thought to himself that he was most definitely not a nature wizard with that kind of thinking.

  Shaelamee returned to the other wizards and Alec thought that her skin had darkened to come close to her normal healthy blue.

  "That should be enough to tide me over and I can still do that other thing I was telling you about. So Helios, do we stay here or do we continue on to look for a better place to camp for the night?"

  The dragaoin looked up at the clouds overhead and, as if he had seen the position of the sun; declared, "There is enough time to push onward. This clearing might be the best we will find for awhile, but Alec has me considering if the hollows we are pursuing might be able to climb trees now. I would rather not find out tonight, if possible.

  "We will push on looking for a better place to camp. I don't think we will have time to discover what we came to find today, but hopefully we can do more tomorrow."

  Breaking camp as efficiently as possible, the three remounted the salamanders and moved deeper into the jungle.

  Chapter 12- Relativity of Time

  Alec rested within the confines of a campsite looking up at the starless night sky and felt alone.

  "Are you awake already, Alec?" Shaelamee asked moving to sit next to the boy's bedroll.

  He lay on his back and noted the dimly lit, petite figure of the genasi girl beside him. His eyes looked at her face, the blue skin still obvious to him in the night. Perhaps alone wasn't exactly correct, but then again some people said that they could feel alone in a crowd. Helios and Shaelamee were welcoming enough, but they were still alien to him. They were becoming friends. Perhaps he should say that they already were. He certainly knew more about Shaelamee than he knew of most people... at least physically anyway.

  "I woke up and couldn't get back to sleep."

  The girl was rolled up in her blanket like she had been earlier when she had awoken from the fruit induced sleep. He wondered if Shaelamee felt that this was a better compromise with him around. Sitting on the salamander with her the remainder of the afternoon, he had settled into holding her around the waist. Her bare midriff between the belt of the skirt and her open back top had become his point to hold onto the girl. Shae's hands often touched his forearms as they rode sometimes stroking his skin like he was a furry animal. He looked at her virtually bare back with only the corners of the top tied at her neck and below her shoulder blades interrupting the sight of her blue skin.

  Compared to that, he supposed the blanket covered her more. Her armor lay beside her pack with her clothing bundled inside it to make for more of a pillow. The blanket was tied beneath her right arm and the lower part opened showing him her bare side as she sat beside him. She was still appropriately covered at least for Shaelamee.

  Her green eyes were large enough to catch the glimmers of light reflected from the clouds above. Though night on Atropos was about as dark as a cloudy night in Southwall, the clouds seemed to cast a little extra light to keep the world from utter darkness. He could make out her green eyes even without casting a vision spell and her light blue cheeks looked nearly pink in the light given by the churning sky.

  She looked up at the clouds a moment and asked, "Did I do or say anything strange when I was hallucinating earlier?"

  "You stripped off your armor and clothing... which I guess isn't that odd for you. You mumbled something and grabbed my face before you passed out. I don't know if you did anything else before we found you." He paused and added, "That was really dangerous." Clearing his throat he added with more emphasis, "You shouldn't have done something so risky. You already came close to death when you went for a swim..."

  "In my defense, I had no idea that there was anything like that monster in the lake."

  "Still, you chased the hollows and ran off all alone. That was pretty stupid..." He stopped clearing his throat. "I mean, it..."

  "It was stupid," the girl agreed even though she could tell that he was going to look for less hurtful words alternatively. "I got carried away and could have paid for it."

  Her hand reached over to grip his upper arm and added, "We stick together from now on. I'll try to be more careful. I can't always assume that you will be able to take care of me, if I keep doing such reckless things."

  "Reckless," he breathed, "that's what I meant to say."

  Shaelamee giggled. "It's alright. I know what you meant and that you weren't trying to be mean."

  Pausing for just a beat, she added, "You're a nice boy, Alec."

  They sat for a moment and Alec asked, "Is it my turn to keep watch already?"

  Shaking her head, the girl answered, "Not yet and I'm not that tired at the moment anyway. I did get a little extra sleep after all. I probably owe it to you two to let you get more sleep, but Helios had to take the first watch.

  "He believes that is likely the m
ost dangerous time... that and early morning, but hollows don't need sleep the way we do and care less about the dark."

  "Then maybe you should have been the morning shift. I could stay up during the middle of the night."

  "Helios trusts you already, I think. He's seen you fight. If you weren't any good at it, he probably would have put you in the middle," Shaelamee tried to assure him.

  "I'm just a novice wizard," the boy replied and sat up crossing his legs. Their heads were close in height like this. She was much shorter than he was, but sitting it was less obvious, he noted. "You've been here longer and have fought these things often. I haven't. What you two can do is pretty impressive. I don't know why he would think that I am more dependable, or whatever."

  Shaelamee shifted lifting the back of the blanket as she turned to face him. It let the blanket remain ahead of her blocking his view of her body more completely even as she crossed her legs mirroring his position. He glanced to her bare feet and lower legs briefly before returning his gaze to the almost glowing green eyes.

  "Your air magic is quite good. For a novice, as you call yourself, you use your skills quite well.

  "I might be older than you and have lived here longer, but I think Helios is correct. You have talent. It is amazing to see in someone so young."

  "You know many young wizards?"

  Pulling back with a start at the question, Shae replied, "Well, not that many. My powers came to me almost ten years ago..."

  "Is that in a measure of your moon's years or Atropos... or Cenestraya maybe?"

  "My world... why?"

  "Helios was telling me that your world has shorter days and years than Atropos. If I am understanding the Ciemnosci hours accurately, then my world's days are longer than yours as well. I haven't tried to do the math to compare and, of course, I am not certain of the hour equivalent and such."