The Station Core_A Dungeon Core Epic

by Jonathan Brooks

  He would have given anything to have something “useless” – this lack of anything like an ability left him constantly wondering what went wrong. If he at least had something he could point to, then he could learn to live with what it was. The uncertainty left him aimless, switching from menial labor job to menial labor job throughout the last couple of years.

  As the class wound down, the children filed out the room, excitedly chatting to each other about what abilities they would like to have when they got older. A few of them saw him at the back of the room on their way out and looked surprised to see him, most knowing or guessing who he was by reputation if not by sight. A few looked ashamed – since they had been talking about abilities – but a couple seemed to share the same opinion as the snarky-looking boy and looked down upon him with scorn. He ignored them with difficulty, just as he ignored the looks of pity some of the others shot his way. He wasn’t exactly used to it, but he had seen enough over the years that he was slowly growing numb to it.

  When they all exited, Whisp walked over to him and apologized, “I’m so sorry, Brint. I wasn’t intending to talk about abilities today, it just seemed like the natural progression from the Guardian Guild. I hope you’re not too upset by what that boy said – in fact, I’m going to go talk to his parents so that they can correct that type of talk.”

  “Don’t worry about it, I’m used to it by now. For all I know, maybe I am ‘useless’,” he responded, a despondent tone inching its way into his voice.

  “Don’t say that! Like I told you before, you’re not useless, you must,” she started.

  “Have a special ability – just one you haven’t found yet,” he finished with her, repeating what she had told him countless times.

  They laughed together, thoughts of the lecture momentarily forgotten as he enjoyed her company. She always made him feel complete, like he didn’t need to have an ability to feel whole. They talked for a while inside the schoolhouse, until the sunlight streaming through the windows grew dimmer and dimmer. As evening set in, he realized he needed to get back to his small shack to get some sleep – he had another early day tomorrow.

  Brint walked her to her small house, the giant-sized workshop connected to it along the side dwarfing her living quarters. He said goodbye as she walked up the pathway to her door, but before he could turn away, she said, “If you get a chance, come by tomorrow night – I have something neat to show you! I think it will help you with your work.” He promised that he would and watched as she entered her house, waving at him as she closed the door.

  Regret tinged his thoughts as he walked back home, the deepening darkness barely hampering him as he knew the way like the back of his hand. He thought about what life would have been like if he had an ability, about what he would be doing now, and about Whisp. He thought she was gorgeous, her light-purple tinged skin a shade lighter than most others, her large ears like two beautiful fans spread out in glorious presentation, and her demure black-pupiled eyes captivated him when he stared deep into their depths. Most Proctans prized height over anything else, so she was unfortunately ignored by the majority of the male population because she was shorter than any other grown-up person that he had ever met. Unlike those others, he prized her differences and appreciated that they made her special, at least to his eyes. She was also super shy when she was interacting with anyone other than Brint, unless she was lecturing. When she was teaching, the world around her seemed to disappear and that was when she was the most comfortable, pushing her normally shy personality to the side.

  When he was younger and nearing puberty, he had dreams of being with her – of possibly spending their lives together – but those fanciful dreams had been dashed when he ended up without an ability. Overheard mutterings between those older than him had mentioned something about it possibly being hereditary, which, unknown until much later, had almost led to his quiet execution.

  He could kind of understand it in a detached sense – if it could be passed on to his offspring, it ran the risk of wiping out abilities for anyone in the far future. If no one had abilities, Proctanity would face the same threat it had during the “Beast War”. Eventually, it was decided that he was to be monitored closely and was told not to engage in sexual behavior in any way, shape, or form. He had rebelled at first, not appreciating being told what he could or couldn’t do, but threats to his life and the lives of his parents, shut him up and convinced him to walk the straight and narrow. He didn’t want his parents, who were two prominent Elemental Casters in the community, to pay the price for his need to sow his wild oats.

  In the end, what it meant was that he could look but not touch – as much as he wanted otherwise. He was pretty sure the Guild leaders had spoken to Whisp as well, warning her away from him, but she must have convinced them that she would still be his friend and would continue to see him. Every now and then, he would see a someone out of the corner of his eye watching them together, but at least it wasn’t intrusive enough to annoy him.

  With those thoughts following him home, he arrived home without even remembering the trip there. He opened his door with a strong jerk, the frame sagging enough that it would stick along the top and bottom unless he pulled it open with more than a little amount of force. He had meant to fix it, but he was always too tired after work that it was usually the last thing on his mind.

  Collapsing upon his bed while grabbing a bite of some tasteless food on the way, he shrugged out of his outer clothing and fell asleep within minutes.

  Chapter 27 – Stupid Picow

  Brint woke up early the next morning, groaning as he got out of bed. Even though he didn’t work yesterday, he still woke up sore like he did most days he was working in the fields. He thought that he would have been used to it after the last year, but the amount of back-breaking work he did seemed to restart all the pain the next day. It didn’t incapacitate him – and he seemed to loosen up while he was working – but at the end of the day and in the morning, he moved around like he was decades older than he actually was. I feel like a 19-year-old man in a 50-year-old body.

  Healers could help alleviate the pain, but he couldn’t afford their services and they wouldn’t waste their power on someone like him anyway. They tended to hoard their power, only using it when there wasn’t any other option – they had a finite amount of power after all and if someone more “important” came along, they wanted to make sure they had enough to help them. Especially since any “Power Potions” cost an arm and a leg.

  Almost 80 years ago, an Inventor by the name of Cordelious discovered where all the power and abilities in everyone came from. While almost everyone believed it to be just something that had always been there, Cordelious found that all the fresh water pulled up from the ground had a certain “residue” in it that caused changes in Proctan physiology. He experimented and found that power could be “regenerated” faster if the subject drank massive quantities of water.

  Further experimentation with some of his colleagues ended up with the creation of “Power Potions”, small vials of concentrated “residue” or “power”, that when ingested could rapidly refill anyone’s power pool. The effort in creating these potions was tremendous, and while the methods weren’t secret by any means, the amount of material and time needed to make enough concentrated “power” for each potion wasn’t cost effective for most people. With a monopoly in the “Power Potion” trade, the Cordpower Company and their affiliates were the only place you could buy them. With their cost of manufacture and rarity, they usually cost more than most people could afford in a year. For him, it was more like what he could earn in a decade.

  So, he had to suffer through the grueling work of the only job nearby that would accept his labor regardless of his inabilities – farming. The people of the village, and the rest of the country for that matter, needed a lot of food to keep them running. Even though each person had a “power pool” inside them, they ended up using a lot of their own energy in the process. This meant that
in addition to the normal amount they would eat to sustain their bodies, they needed to consume almost four times more if they consistently used their power during the day. For their modest village of about 200 residents, this meant that they needed to grow enough food for almost 1000 people.

  While their two resident Nature Manipulators, Hergis and Thern, did an awesome job of using their powers to make the food grow and mature, they didn’t gather it up, carry it back to the food shed, or process it so that it was ready to eat. Normally, they paid an Elemental Caster to use their power to gather it with their wind manipulation, deposit on the ground where it could be moved using earth manipulation, and then washed and prepared the food using various methods of water manipulation. They were expensive and the ones who were willing to do such basic work were few and far between, so instead the village hired the one person that didn’t have a job to do and paid him a lot less – Brint.

  He also had to feed the Picows, who were the main source of meat for the village. While most creatures during the “Beast War” a century ago turned deadly and aggressive, the Picow was the exact opposite. Standing 7 feet tall and weighing in at almost 3000 pounds, the Picow was a giant, docile beast that wouldn’t hurt anything if it could help it. He was told that the original beast was a pig, a much smaller version of the Picow, though the pig was dark-colored instead of the Picow’s lighter brown coloring. Both had a curly tail, a snub nose, and were really fat, but that was the extent of the similarities.

  Quickly getting ready for work, he splashed some tepid water on his face from a cracked bowl in the corner, ate some more of the tasteless mash he had stored up, and threw on some dirty clothes. He didn’t need to look nice since he was just going to end up covered in dirt and vegetation by the end of the day anyway. He walked out the door and headed out of the village to the small field nearest the tree line. Every day, they rotated between 14 small fields, each one in a different stage of development. He didn’t see either of the Nature Manipulators, but he didn’t expect to since they were probably in the previous day’s field planting and encouraging the plants to grow.

  Although they could easily grow a very small field of food in a day, it was more cost-effective in terms of power to gradually grow it over the course of a couple of weeks. They could spread a lower-level blanket of power over a field, speeding up the growing process in small increments instead of all at once. That was why they had so many fields – each one was at a different stage in the growing process.

  He waved at the Guild representative standing near the processing shed before heading off into the field with a small cart to begin the harvesting process. Every village or town near the border of unknown territory required Guild protection, and any area outside the immediate village vicinity being worked upon needed to have an accompanied representative. He knew there was another one near Hergis and Thern – even though they could probably take care of themselves – but from what he knew it was better to be safe than sorry.

  It took the better part of five hours before he was done in the field, which was a mixture of eight different vegetables that needed to be harvested in different manners. The variety meant that people weren’t stuck eating the same thing every day, they could mix it up to make it a little more palatable. After taking the undersized, damaged, or otherwise rejected vegetables to the trough for the four Picows near this field, he headed into the processing shed where he had deposited most of the stuff he had harvested earlier in the day. Taking a quick break – even though no one was watching him, he knew if he dallied too long he would just be here longer tonight – he ate some lunch and got to work cleaning, shucking, and otherwise prepping the food so that it could be sold and ready for someone’s stomach.

  He had only begun when he heard a commotion outside in the field. The Picows in the pen were squealing in terror, or at least what he thought was terror. Rushing outside with a small blade still clutched in his hand that he used in his food preparation, he looked to the Picow pen and saw two of the large beasts lying on the ground, blood fountaining from massive wounds that had sliced open their bellies and necks. The other two were backed up along the side of the pen closest to the field, pushing up against the fence, trying to get away from what had killed the other ones.

  Brint looked past the dead Picows to see the Guild guard fighting against three Spider Wolves, his speed so fast that he looked like a blur when he tried to concentrate on him. Despite having the speed advantage, the three wolves used the four spider legs emerging from their backs to constantly stab forward with deadly accuracy while they attempted to bite the defending guard with their fangs dripping deadly venom.

  While he was keeping the Spider Wolves at bay, he wasn’t making much progress in killing them. He imagined that the loud squealing from the Picows could be easily heard from the next field over, so he was sure that the guard would get some help from the other Guild member soon. He didn’t dare get close enough himself to help, because he couldn’t even imagine going toe-to-toe with something as scary as the wolves in the pen.

  Suddenly, he saw the guard faulter, limping out of range after a lucky shot from a spider leg hit him in his upper leg. He quickly fished out a healing potion from his pocket and chugged it. While Brint couldn’t see the wound heal, he could see the change come over the man as he straightened up and began attacking again.

  However, the damage had been done. While the guard had been healing himself, the wolves took advantage of the situation and lunged for the still living Picows trying to stay as far away from them as possible. Those lunges, even though the guard got there in time, were enough for the Picows to press on the fence with just enough force that it broke under the pressure. One of the Picows ran for safety into the processing shed, while the other one ran into the field toward the trees, presumably out of its mind with fear and not knowing where it was going.

  I’m probably going to regret this. Making a quick decision that probably wouldn’t end up well, Brint ran after the Picow, intent on bringing it back to the field. A couple of months ago, he had accidentally left a small gate open on one of the Picow pens at the end of the day, resulting in one of them wandering off, never to be seen again. The Mayor of the village – who ran the whole field/food operation – told him that he was on permanent probation after the incident. If he lost another Picow, he’d be out of work and he wasn’t sure if anyone would hire him after that happened.

  He could probably blame this on the Spider Wolf attack, the same as the two dead ones in the pen, but he didn’t want to take the chance. He could just imagine the guard saying that he just stood there while it got away. He knew he wasn’t expected to fight the wolves, but he was more than capable of fetching a stray Picow.

  Dropping the knife in his hand to prevent an accidental self-stabbing, he ran across the field while keeping an eye on the battling foursome, he slipped through the trees following the obvious trail of trampled foliage and snapped branches. He figured that it would stop soon, allowing him to lead it back to its pen, where – hopefully – the battle had been concluded and things had been cleaned up. No such luck, unfortunately, as the trail led deeper into the forest and he couldn’t even hear it ahead. Damn, I didn’t realize these things were so fast – especially when they are scared out of their minds.

  He was starting to get tired and the sun was starting to set, which caused the already muted lighting under the trees to darken, and he was still no closer to getting that stupid Picow back. He was ready to turn around, prepared to explain to the Mayor that he had done all he could to get it back, when he heard a loud squeal come from up ahead on the path he was following. Knowing that what he was doing was probably stupid, he foolishly decided to see what had happened.

  Sneaking through the underbrush as quietly as possible, which ultimately wasn’t that quiet since he didn’t spend a lot of time in the forest, Brint slowly crept up on where he thought the noise had come from. He brushed aside a branch blocking his vision and saw the Picow lying o
n its side, with six small, scaly-skinned purple wolves with their mouths on it, trying to tear off pieces of the poor animal. As he watched, he realized they weren’t trying to eat it, but were trying to drag it away. With a small chuckle at the absurdity of it that he immediately regretted, he froze as six sets of eyes immediately trained on him as he crouched halfway behind a tree.

  Knowing he was screwed, he tried to run but immediately tripped over a root a couple of feet behind where he was ineffectually hiding. He landed on his left wrist where he felt and heard a popping sound, followed by excruciating pain. Fighting through the pain, he tried to get to his knees when he was hit from behind, which knocked him down again on his stomach. Using his uninjured hand, he managed to turn his body over, only to be confronted by a circle of snarling wolves.

  Body stiff with fear, he couldn’t move – he could only watch as they slowly approached his prone form. It’s all that damn Picow’s fault! If it wasn’t for that stupid, dumb animal I’d—His thoughts were interrupted as he could see the wolves about to pounce. Suddenly, he could feel a power flow through his body, unlike anything he had felt before. It was like a drinking a mug of a hot beverage on frigid night, fingers wrapped around the near-burning cup as heat spread throughout his frozen body.