by Mills, H. C.
I sigh lethargically as my mind drifts off.
What would my family be up to? It’s been what, a month? Actually, does time even flow at the same rate here? Suri does measure stuff in hours and minutes. A question for next time, maybe.
Anyway, a month would mean summer break is over, and school has started again for my little brother and sister.
They’re already in eighth grade... I had promised I’d help with math.
Before I know it, tears are flowing down my cheeks.
I catch a look at myself in the mirror. Ugh, self-pity is not a good look on me. I rub away the tears and take a few deep breaths, sending the Aether in the room swirling even more than usual.
I take another look at my slightly purple-tinted reflection and the small ram’s horns that sprout from my forehead and curl back towards my ears. Right now, they still look kinda small and cute, but if I ever make it back, would my family still recognise me?
Would I still be human?
Perhaps due to my emotional outburst, I am the last to walk through a short hallway and enter the living room. It looks much the same as the previous one, with the addition of gratings in the floor and ceiling. Also, there’s no exit door like in the last one. Wonder what that’s all about.
As I step through my door, Alec turns and looks at me.
At least, I think he does. It’s hard to tell now that he’s run out of pupils.
He smiles wryly. “Hey Ems.”
His voice is raspy. Not in a natural-sounding way like Jacob’s, but the way someone sounds the morning after they screamed their lungs out at a concert.
Guilt wells up in me and I smile back shakily, before going in for a hug.
I release him, discreetly wiping the corner of my eye with a fingertip. Because it’s itchy. “Hey man. I’m—”
“Can I just—” he starts at the same time.
We both pause.
I awkwardly clear my throat, looking down and scuffing my worn sneaker against the floor. “Sorry, you go first.”
“I just wanted to say thank you,” he says. “From what I hear, you really came through for me in the end, never gave up on saving me and all that.”
I glance up in surprise, and look around at the rest, only to be met with smiles. I’ll admit, I’m a little relieved they don’t seem to blame me, but I also just feel even guiltier somehow. “Well... I wanted to apologise, for dragging you into that whole mess.”
One corner of his lips lifts up into a lopsided smile. “Eh, it’s okay. I mean, it’s not okay, you know—my eye’s gone, and I only had the one left, but... that’s not on you.”
“I still feel responsible,” I say, shaking my head. “I shouldn’t have ignored the alarm bells ringing in my head, but that trident...”
Alec smiles wistfully. “I hear ya. I wish I could’ve at least held on to my haul, you know?”
I open my mouth only to close it again. Guess he doesn’t know I grabbed his bag. I could tell him now, but it might be more fun to spring it on him as a surprise a little later, when the mood’s less tense.
I take a deep breath, and face the rest. “Actually, I wanted to apologise to all of you. My screw-up didn’t just put Alec in danger, after all. I jeopardised all of us out of greed, and I’m sorry.”
Kaitlynn takes this as her cue to pounce on me from the side, her reply partially muffled by my shoulder. “You’re forgiven.” I affectionately pat her on the head, until she lets go, beaming at me.
My eye seeks out Dave, who just shakes his head. “I signed off on your plan, didn’t I?”
“You had it correctly pegged as a trap though,” I counter.
He shrugs. “All the more reason I should’ve known better. In my eyes, I carry as much responsibility as you.”
I want to refute that, but Jacob comes up to me stiffly. “Hey, ehm, Pseudo told me—will you shut up? It’s not your real name anyway! Anyway, she told me I had you to thank for making it out alive, so, you know, no hard feelings on my part.”
He sticks out his hand for a shake. I grab it and, shaking my head with a wry smile, pull him in for a brief hug, deciding to accept I’m not being blamed.
When did I become so huggy? Must be that I’m still kinda emotional. Either that or Kaitlynn’s rubbing off on me.
We catch up, snacking on some nuts and berries. Kaitlynn happily hands me back my spear, earning another hug. It seems Jacob already received his shield from Dave as well.
Eventually, we all make our way to the corner couch and flop down in our usual positions. Meaning Kaitlynn plants her head in my lap and gives me puppy-dog eyes until I start scratching her head.
“All right,” I say sharply when a lull occurs in the conversation. “We’ve all had our five minutes of questions, and even though we couldn’t exactly divide our topics beforehand this time, we should still share what we’ve learned. So, who wants to go first?”
“Questions?” Alec grumbles. “What questions? Sarge just spent ‘our’ five minutes berating me for losing the eye-crystal and telling me never to do that again.”
Kaitlynn winces emphatically and scrunches her nose up cutely.
“Ooh, that reminds me,” I say about a second later, momentarily distracted for some reason. “I asked Suri if there was a Skill to regrow your eye, and she said there was!”
Alec perks up and turns his head towards me. Pretty sure he’s looking at me now...
“Though, you’ll have to learn it yourself, as performing it on someone else is really hard,” I say, quickly trying to manage his expectations. “And it’ll probably take some time for you to learn because you have to master a certain level of a certain Skill, ehm, and I don’t know which one, ’cause, well, Suri wouldn’t tell me...” I trail off awkwardly, as I see his smile waver. Damn, I should’ve remembered to take a look at the Skilldream Shopping Window first.
“Ah, the Skill’s called Regeneration,” Kaitlynn pipes up from my lap. “It’s a high-grade Lavi manipulation Skill, and you need Meditation level 3 to begin learning it.” Blinking, I look down, while my scratching hand stills.
Kaitlynn pouts but continues. “Kai just flat out told me when I brought it up. He kept rambling on about it afterwards,” she says, rolling her eyes. “From what I managed to understand, Restoration can’t fix it because that works by stimulating someone’s Lavi to perform its natural healing function, so it can’t direct it into performing more complex tasks.”
Huh. Regeneration, that sounds about right. And I probably could have figured out that it should be Meditation level 3, but still.
“Must be nice to have such a helpful AI,” I grumble half-jokingly.
[Please, that chatterbox is about as useful as a well on a ship,] Suri chimes. [I’m just trying to keep you focused on what’s important.]
Oof, touchy!
“Well,” Kaitlynn sighs, “he does try to be helpful, but he also seems to see the five-minute session as an opportunity to stop holding back and talk non-stop. He’s pretty hard to keep on topic. I know more about the life-cycle of the Hoig now than I ever thought I wouldn’t want to.”
[I rest my case,] Suri chimes haughtily.
“A part of me wants to ask about that now, another part of me is afraid to,” I confess to Kaitlynn.
Kaitlynn purses her lips mock-thoughtfully. “Mmm, airing it all out might help a little, even if it’s just so I’m not the only one suffering.”
My right eyelid twitches. “You know what? I’ve made up my mind. I don’t want to know.”
Kaitlynn sits up energetically, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Tough luck, I’m telling you now. You see, when two Hoig—”
“Lalala, not listening!” I cry, putting my hands over my ears.
Dave clears his throat. “Let’s stay on topic please, girls,” he says, smiling. “I’ll go next. I tried asking questions about the eye-crystal.”
That shuts us up. Kaitlynn removes her hands from my wrists, where she was ineffectually trying to wrench m
y arms loose, and sticks her tongue out at me. I graciously return the gesture, before turning to listen to Dave.
“Predictably, most of the answers I got were, ‘that’s classified,’ but I did manage to glean some information. First of all, without an eye-crystal you cannot perform the Trials and doors won’t open for you. We had kind of figured that out already, but still.”
I nod. It’s good to have official confirmation. Knowledge is power.
“Now, if your eye-crystal is truly lost, you could—theoretically—take someone else’s. Though they would have to be of the same affinity as you.”
My eyes widen. That sounds intense. Alec and I lock gazes for a second. I think.
“I think you might end up connected with that person’s AI then,” Dave speculates, “Rose was a little vague about that.”
Hmm. Interesting.
To be honest, despite my grumbling earlier, I’m pretty attached to Suri. I sneak another glance at Alec. Definitely better than ‘The Sarge.’
“I also asked if they would be for sale at any point, to see if it was possible to get a second one for Alec, to regain his stereoscopic vision, and to carry around spares since they’re so crucial, but that was a definite no. They’re not for sale and using two at the same time isn’t possible. In fact, tampering with eye-crystals is strictly forbidden, and even taking a deceased person’s eye-crystal would only be permitted if it was to replace another person’s lost eye-crystal, as they are normally recycled, meaning—”
Alec jumps in with a face full of horror. “—these crystals have been in the eye sockets of previous participants until they died?! Gross!”
I have to agree. Yuck.
“Exactly,” Dave concludes. “I’m afraid that’s about all I managed to get out of her on the topic.”
We all fall quiet for a bit, mulling over the implications until Jacob takes the floor.
“I couldn’t really think of anything specific,” he intones flatly, “so I asked about the next Trial.”
Ah, good. I’d kind of assumed someone else would. Glad not everyone’s like me.
“Pseudo—shut up—wasn’t able to tell me much, except that we would be spending significant amounts of time under-Hydrum, and that we should prepare for combat.”
Hmm.
I take another look at the gratings in the roof and floor. “Suri, could you flood the living room with Hydrum?”
[Of course, all you had to do was ask.]
“Perfect—no, wait!” I cry, jumping up. But it’s too late. A veritable deluge of Hydrum comes crashing down from the grating above us, and from several other gratings across the room.
“Suri!” I sputter after washing off the couch. “That was a hypothetical question!”
[Oh my,] Suri chimes bemused. [You mean you don’t wish for me to fill the living room with Hydrum?]
“No!”
[No as in no you don’t mean that, or no you don’t want me to?]
“No as in ‘No I don’t want you to fill up the room with Hydrum right now!’ ”
[Well, why didn’t you just say so?] Suri chimes smugly, before cutting off the flow.
“Why you little—”
The Hydrum, which is up to our hips at this point, swiftly starts to drop, which is our cue to frantically try and save any loose objects from flushing away through the gratings in the floor. Thankfully, it has rather small holes, so anything larger than a jicca nuts turns up stuck on top of it once the last of the Hydrum has drained away.
Becoming aware of everyone’s baleful gazes, I clear my throat awkwardly. “Suri says she can.”
“Right,” Dave deadpans. “Well, that’ll come in handy. We’ll need to practise.”
“Agreed,” Jacob says, shaking some Hydrum from his ear. He sat directly below one of the grates. “We’ll have to find a good way to communicate under-Hydrum too, and I really need to learn that breathing Skill you guys all have. Apparently, it works with Hydrum too.”
“Yeah,” I say dryly. “I don’t know about you guys, but Suri really drove that point home for me.”
Kaitlynn snickers, so I glare at her.
“Anyway,” Jacob continues. “That got me to thinking. We totally got screwed over! I mean, if you think about it, we didn’t actually need the barge at all. We could’ve just drifted along in the river, breathing under-Hydrum the whole way. We never needed to fight!”
A beat of silence falls. Well... damn.
Dave frowns. “Perhaps. But if the frog—the Hoig had any presence under-Hydrum, we probably would’ve been done for. At least on the barge, we were able to fight them off and earn quite a few Trial Points as a result.”
Something clicks in my mind and my jaw drops. I jump up and shout, “Frig! Of course! That’s how they did it!”
Everyone stares at me as if I’ve grown another head.
“The—aargh, you know—the safe method to get to the Stardrops in Hub Two the friggin’ council said they found!” I explain calmly and rationally. “They must’ve dived into the stream and breathed Hydrum to avoid taking in Toxic Energy! It flows all the way to the bloody pond! We’re so stupid!”
“Ah,” Dave finally replies. “In our defence, it’s very counterintuitive to try and breathe water...”
I slump back into my seat. “Pfff, yeah, that’s true. I wonder who figured it out and how.”
“Guess we’ll have to ask around in Hub Three,” Alec says, shrugging carelessly.
“If we actually make it there,” Jacob mumbles.
“If the pattern holds, we’ll have two more Trials to go before we get there,” Dave muses. “I wonder how many Trials there are in total, though I’d doubt they’d—”
“Nine,” Kaitlynn interrupts. “Kai just said so. There’s nine in total. And the final test is in the Fourth Hub.”
We all stare at her.
Dave blinks, clearly caught off guard. “Well, that’s... good to know,” he sputters. “We’re nearly halfway, then, I suppose.”
[Unbelievable,] Suri chimes. I can’t help but snort.
As useful as a well on a ship, eh? I gotta say, I don’t mind him at all!
“Anyway, you’re the only one who hasn’t shared with the class yet, Emma,” Kaitlynn adds, poking me in the side. “What did you ask about?”
The question snaps me out of my daze, and I answer with a cocksure grin. “Why, me? Oh, you know, I just figured I’d ask some questions,”—I pause to pick up Alec’s backpack, skilfully hidden from his monocular—or perhaps I should say ‘none-ocular’—vision behind my own, and spill its shiny, glowing contents out on the floor—“about these.”
The expression on Alec’s face is totally worth the pain in my ear as he literally squeals in joy.
CHAPTER 14
Crystals are a girl’s best friend
AS SOON AS EVERYONE’S hearing has recovered from Alec’s squeal, I begin explaining.
“So, I figured it’d be worthwhile to ask about not only the crystals in this bag but crystals in general. I’ll try and relay what I learned using a few examples. Suri, could you share my Appraisal Windows with the rest, please?”
[Sure thing, Emma.]
Perfect.
“All right, let’s start with the first of the three natural types of crystals: pure Yin and Yang Qi crystals, like—”
I reach for the bounty spread out on the floor in front of the couch that everyone’s gawking at and pick up my first example.
“—this one, though I’m sure you’ve all seen it before. Appraise!”
“Though it’s called a pearl, it’s actually a crystal made of pure Qi,” I explain. “As you can see, Alec grabbed exactly one Yin and one Yang Pearl, so we’ll have to discuss who get those later. Anyway, their main function is replenishing Qi, and for ‘weaklings’ like us,” I continue, applying air quotations to indicate I am quoting Suri, “forcibly increasing our maximum Qi capacity. Next up is the second natural type of crystal... the Lavi Crystal.”
I pick up ano
ther familiar golf-ball-sized crystal. “Appraise.”
“Turns out, this crystal and that one,” I say, pointing at the head-sized green Lavi Crystal embedded in the ceiling, “are exactly the same type of crystal: they’re pure crystallised Lavi, formed by living beings concentrating their excess Lavi. In order to demonstrate that, I had Suri add the Lavi emission to the appraisal result. That usually isn’t shown as it’s pretty negligible.”
“Wait,” Alec interjects, raising his hand as if he were in class. “Do you mean to say those Crystals of Lavi in the ceiling are consumable?!”
I blink at him. “Huh. I mean, I guess? Suri?”
[Theoretically. Unless he can unhinge his jaw, however, I don’t see how he would pull it off.]
I snort. “She says technically yes.”
“What would even happen?” Jacob mutters. “That thing’s gotta contain like, 1000 Onkh of Lavi.”
“Good point,” I say with a frown. “If our experience with Stardrops is anything to go by, I think the result might be explosive...”
[Oh, quite. You’d have to scrape him off the roof.]
I reiterate this. Alec’s eyebrows rise, and he quickly drops his hand. “Duly noted.”
“Interesting,” Dave says, his eye shining. “Does that mean we could potentially grow crystals on our own bodies, like the Trigots?”
“I think we could, actually,” I say, causing several brows to rise in surprise. “Suri wasn’t too forthcoming about this, which is why I suspect that growing a Lavi Crystal in or on ourselves may be the goal of some Skill. My money would be on Lavi Font, or something derived thereof.”
“Could be a good way to counter the increasing resting Lavi consumption,” Jacob remarks thoughtfully.
I nod. “Exactly. I think that’s actually why creatures have them. As they grow bigger and stronger, their Lavi consumption increases, to the point where breathing and eating become inadequate, so they need an additional source.”
I put the Lavi Crystal back down, and pick up a different, orange glowing crystal.