“We need to travel to my people,” ordered Olga as she glared at him. “You need to learn to fight for the journey as it can be dangerous to travel. I am going to teach you to fight better for the next several days and then we travel.”
All Ahava could do was a nod and accept all the upcoming beating. He thought, I am going to get a lot of healing practice. He had noticed in the last few days that he was getting slightly thinner.
Unexpectedly, later on, rather than fighting Olga ran him through some weapons maneuvers. Her tribe seemed to have developed sophisticated systems of combat over the years. Ahava found the maneuvers to be very graceful, with power being added at the end for the strike or block. Overall the experience was very satisfying. Olga, a brutal teacher, hit him with a stick if Ahava got it wrong. Shouting at her just made the hits harder. Of course, in the end, they practiced combat and then Ahava got to practice healing.
For the next five days, they carried on with training three times a day. In between the combat practice sessions, they prepared stores for the journey. Olga hunted and cooked; Ahava experimented with the elemental powers.
During one of the days, Ahava sorted through the goblins’ possessions. There was a lot of junk in the form of small stones with strange symbols on them. The food the goblins had in their possession was all foul and was quickly thrown into the fire. What was of interest were some talismans, rings, and necklaces. Some of them he could sense the elemental power in. Using the ether and earth elemental power, he could scan the structure of the items. Working with the items, he found he could pour a constant stream of elemental power into material structures. In addition, he was able to pull the same power from the items. This increased his efficiently of flux rate and he found he could get a larger effect if he pulled the power from the items.
Selecting two rings and three talismans, he put them in his pocket. This was one for each power. When he was not using his power, he constantly charged them with each of his powers. This initially took concentration but eventually, with practice it became easy. He tried to offer the rest to Olga, but she said she did not want any filthy goblin crap.
The rest of the time he tried different elemental power combinations while working on weapons and armor production. As Olga had been so amazed by the ax and knife he had made for her, he thought that it would be useful to have something of value to trade. Olga had told him that there was a human kingdom north of her tribe’s location. After seeing her to her tribe's area he planned to travel to the human kingdom.
As part of his experimental work, he was making one of many knives. He tried to infuse it with the elemental flux of air and ether. This was to see if he could make it lighter by levitation. As he was infusing flux into the item, he lost the equivalent flux from his stats. He could pull it back but then the item would lose the levitation effect. On his first try, he nearly lost the knife as started to rise in the air. He had to quickly grab it and reduce the flux level.
It was the morning they had decided to leave. With his bag of holding containing food, water, weapon and anything else he could put his hands on, they were ready to leave. Just before going he checked his stats:
Gender: Male
Biological Age: 45
Intelligence: 14, Stamina: 7, Strength: 8, Constitution: 8, Dexterity 6, Charisma: 11
Points: 325
Element - Flux rate per second
Earth -300; Water -100; Air -500; Fire -500; Ether -200
Aristotle's Rhetoric Emotions
Emotions - Flux rate per second
Anger -50; Calmness -20; Friendship -20, Fear-20; Courage -50; Shame -2, Confidence-30; Kindness -10; Cruelty -20; Pity -20; Envy -10; Love -10
He noticed his elemental flux values had gone up significantly. This pleased him greatly, as he felt that working with his power had gotten easier.
It was early morning when they set out. Olga led them to set the pace. Walking back down the hill, Ahava looked back on their campsite with some regret at leaving. He was now venturing into this strange and dangerous world with some trepidation.
Once they were down the hill, they started to follow the river upstream. As they walked through the green grass by the side of the river, Ahava noted the odd plants. Some of them were different from what he had experienced in his previous world. Every now and then Olga would pick a plant or some leaves of a tree. Then she would smell it and sometimes eat it or put it in her bag. For each plant she picked Ahava picked another and put it in his bag to study later.
They made good time in the morning as they walked by the river with rolling hills on either side. Around midday, they stopped for some food. Ahava’s feet had blisters on them and his legs were aching with all the walking so far. He healed the blisters on his feet, which stopped the pain. He then used the healing power to relieve his aching legs. Standing up, he felt like he could carry on walking with no pain now. As they walked in the afternoon, they saw large animals in the distance toward the hills. Olga looked in their direction with a worried expression and picked up the pace.
Before going to sleep at night both of them practiced the weapons maneuvers but this time did not fight. Ahava was grateful for that. They did not start a fire and just ate the meat they had prepared for the journey. They took turns staying awake and watching for danger.
Ahava woke up during the night to some high-pitched yelping. He jumped up with his heart racing and saw Olga in the distance, surrounded by five doglike creatures on the ground dead. She was cleaning her ax blade on one of the dogs’ back.
Walking over, raising his eyebrows at Olga, he asked, “What happened?”
“Oh, nothing much, we just had a few visitors,” replied Olga, sounding bored. “You can take over the watch now.”
Olga found a bit of ground to sleep on and was soon snoring away.
Looking at the dogs, he could see ax wounds on each of them. Scratching his head, he wondered if he could use the dogs’ carcasses for anything useful. As he did not have time to experiment now, he took a few of the most intact bodies and stored them in his bag. As this bag had such a large storage volume, he was not concerned about with filling it up just yet. It still amazed Ahava when he put items in and took items out of the bag. For large items, he had to pull the bag opening until it was large enough to push the object in. It was like a snake eating its prey whole. When taking anything out, he put his hand into the bag. Then he somehow visualized the contents of the bag and only had to think about what he wanted. The object was then in his hand and he could pull it out. With large objects, he had to open the bag mouth and pull it out.
As he looked into the night, he nervously scanned back and forth for any movement. The stars were brilliantly bright high in the night sky. This was the first time he had had a chance to study the constellations. There were none that he recognized, not that he was an expert on the night sky.
Nothing else happened for the rest of the night. In the morning they again practiced weapons maneuvers and set off on their journey again.
This routine continued for a week of travel. There were a lot of incidents with some strange creatures. Most of the incidents were easily dealt with by Olga, with little help from Ahava. He had a collection of different animal carcasses in his bag now. Olga was one princess killing machine. She seemed to enjoy combat, as she was either smiling or humming when the slaughter finished. The grace displayed every time she used her ax inspired Ahava to work harder on his own weapon skills. The only talking they did during the travel was when Olga gave a short order or a reprimand during training.
Halfway through the fifth day, Ahava observed Olga stopping more often and scanning the hills and the scenery. She kept putting her hand to her head to block out the sun and looking into the distance. Finally, she seemed to recognize what she had been looking for. This produced an excited grunt and a large smile across her face. The smile was frightening to Ahava, with her large tusks and deep-set eyes. She turned to Ahava in a commanding manner, tapping the bottom
of her ax on the ground.
“I leave you now,” said Olga as she frowned at Ahava while hitting her hand with the wood of her ax. “My tribe is east from here. They will not welcome you, human,” said Olga while spitting out the word human as if it was a bad-tasting food between her tusks.
“Ok,” said Ahava. “How do I get to the human kingdom from here?”
“You follow the river upstream for two days and you will come to a fort marking the border of the kingdom,” said Olga, turning her back to Ahava and starting to walk away.
Ahava stared at her, wondering if she was going to say any more. She walked about twenty meters and turned around, looking Ahava in the eyes and then lowering her eyes as her face turned red with a blush and said, “Thank you.”
She turned around and walked quickly into the distance. Ahava watched, half happy and half sad she was leaving. The happiness was because he had found being told what to do all the time had been a bit grating on his nerves. The sadness was he because had come to trust her and was thankful for all her help.
He turned his face and started walking, wondering what was ahead.
As he traveled through the afternoon the landscape started to look lusher and greener. There were larger trees than there had been previously, with green foliage. As the sun started to get lower in the sky, Ahava saw some buildings in the distance. He hurried his pace as he was excited to finally see some sign of habitation. Sweating now, he was stumbling along at a half running pace. He started to be able to make out detail on the building.
The buildings were half collapsed, with dark burn marks against some of the walls. As he got closer, he felt like the hair on his neck was rising. Now that he was within twenty meters of the ruins he could see that they were made out of sun-baked bricks. There seemed to have originally been some kind of wall surrounding the ruins. This was collapsed in a section, allowing Ahava easy access to the ruins.
Stepping on the bricks that were crumbling as he walked over them, he made his way into the ruined complex. Looking out, he saw small streets winding through the ruins. He was at an elevated point. All the buildings were close together, sharing external walls. The air was very still and there was a silence that fell over the ruins like a suffocating blanket. Taking a deep breath, Ahava walked into the ruins. The first house he came to, he entered through a large crumbling hole in the wall. Looking around the first floor, there was nothing inside except some piles of rotting wood. The whole house was a mess, as if it had been like this for a long time. He searched around by kicking apart the piles, finding nothing. Ahava was curious as to what had happened and wanted to see if he could salvage something of use.
Both nervous and excited, he armed himself with his ax and exited the first house, looking down the winding streets. All the streets led to the center of the ruins. In the distance, he saw a massive baked brick structure. It had the form of a terraced compound of successively receding stories. At the top was a building that reminded Ahava of a Greek temple or shrines he had seen in books.
Deciding that this structure, if anything, was most likely to have answers to his questions and also was the best possibility of finding anything of value, he set out for it. Slowly he crept along the streets with his eyes scanning back and forth for any movement. His palms were sweaty on the staff of his ax, as he felt increasingly nervous the closer he walked to the center of the ruins.
At the base of the large structure, there was a set of stairs leading up to the top platform. He slowly started up the uneven stairs, careful to avoid tripping, as they were uneven. As he came to each terrace, he walked around the building, only finding rubble. There seemed to be no entrance into the structure. Slowly he got closer to the top. When finally on the top he walked over to the shrine. The shrine was an open building with columns on all sides. There was a roof but in the center, it was open to the heavens. Around the outside, there were small alcove rooms. First Ahava explored these as he tried to silently move through the building while slinking around the corners. He felt like he was in a horror movie and at any moment some evil monster was going to attack him from behind. He was constantly glancing behind as he was slinking around.
Finding nothing of note in the alcove rooms, it looked like they had been stripped bare. He moved toward the center of the shrine. In the center stood a brick block-looking like an altar from some ancient temple. Surrounding it were crumbling statues of people in different heroic poses. In the center behind the altar was a larger statue of a male with a spear in one hand and a shield in the other. The expression on his face was one of anger and determination, with his mouth forming a shout. The spear was held like he was going to throw it toward the front of the shrine. Ahava could not pull his eyes from the main godlike man.
Walking around the altar, he saw one side had collapsed. This presented a hole in the floor. Ahava moved closer. A blast of fear and dread seemed to be emanating from the hole like waves of darkness in a foggy night. This forced Ahava to step backward in fear, trembling. In the fading light, Ahava could just see some stairs leading down into the ancient terrace structure. Ahava slowly retreated to one of the alcove rooms. As he did the immediate fear and dread passed.
Sitting down with his legs against his chest he thought, Why is there fear coming out of the hole? If anything of value is in this ziggurat then it will be down the hole.
Ahava started to think of the pros and cons of exploring farther into the depths of the ziggurat. He needed more resources if he was going to survive and prosper in this world, and if he didn't take risks then he would get nowhere. He decided to go down but not at night. As the sun was starting to set, he set up a fire using wood from his bag. Lighting the fire with the fire elemental powers was easy as now it could produce a jet flame of about half a meter. Soon this might be of use as a weapon, he hoped. After cooking some food over the open fire, he ate silently. The oppressive fear was not there anymore but a constant level of fear was ever present in his thoughts. To feel better he tried to imagine himself in a happy place where he was strong and bold. Suddenly a great surge of confidence hit him. He felt like he could take on the world. He stood up and made a heroic pose that he had seen on statues. A bit shocked, he stopped imagining that he was strong and bold. The feeling suddenly disappeared and he slumped down again onto the floor, shouting in pain as his bottom hit the hard bricks.
Rubbing his bottom, he thought, What was that about?
He contemplated for a while and then eventually remembered about emotions flux value in his stats. He had been too busy with the elemental power and really had not considered what the emotions flux values could do.
In deep contemplation, with his eyes looking off into the distance, he thought, I wonder if they work like the elemental powers.
Using the same techniques he used for the elemental power, he found that he could turn on different emotions. By changing the flux going into himself, the intensity of the emotions differed. He went from being happy to sad and in love with the world. With tears running down his face from all the emotions, he smiled, thinking about what he could do with this power if he wanted.
Using the emotional control to just overcome the fear, he managed to fall asleep in the floor by the fire.
Chapter Six: Into the Deeps
In the morning the fire had burnt down. The clay bricks that Ahava was curled up on were cold, sharp and hard to sleep on. Thinking that he needed to develop some bedding, Ahava got up and ate his breakfast. Using the emotional flux, he controlled his fear. He found that he had to increase the flux power the closer he got to the hole in the bottom of the altar.
Ahava used the earth elemental power to make a hole large enough to climb down the stairs. In the darkness, he produced a fire to light the way. The stairs were a steep descent that switched back and forth in a spiral. Some of the stairs were broken and Ahava had to step carefully. In a few minutes, he came to an opening at the bottom of the stairs. At the end of the opening was a double set of doors. The doors
were built of heavy stone. They had pictures of a man wearing a band around the top of his head, with curly hair above. He also had a big, curly beard sticking down from his chin. He was wearing a long tunic, reaching to ankles. Around his waist was a short, straight skirt. In his hand, he held a rod ending in a sphere. Surrounding the man there were animals, all bowing down. On the door also was some writing in the form of different indents and scratched patterns in the wall. Ahava was not able to read anything.
Locking the door was a large stone seal between two handles. This had the feeling of a cursed tomb. For a second Ahava lowered the emotional flux into his body to see what would happen. The feeling of fear and dread forced him to the ground, screaming in agony. He quickly raised his resistance to the fear. This allowed him to get up. In trepidation of what he might find behind the door, he thought of going back. But the thought of finding something he could use pushed him forward.
Using the earth power, he managed to break the seal. It fell to dust on the ground. He pushed open the door surprisingly easily. Ahava thought, There must be some kind of counterweight system helping. Walking past the door, he entered a room. In the center of the room was a stone box. The box was carved with scenes similar to those he had seen on the door. The walls were also carved. Three openings led away from the room. Ahava walked up to the box and looked in. Inside was a dried-out husk of a body. Its lips were formed with a look of loathing. The skin across his body was like a dried, flaky parchment.
On its chest was an amulet. This emanated a feel of the ether elemental power. Excited that he had found anything of value, Ahava took hold of the amulet. He felt a surge of power that threw him back against the wall.
As he was getting up from the ground, feeling the pain, a voice shouted from the box and reverberated around the room. “Who dares?”
Slowly the body rose out of the casket and turning its head toward Ahava, it shouted again, “Who dares?”
The First Era Page 5