Watcher's Test

by Sean Oswald

  Mira ran over and grabbed the staff using her knife to cut the end loose from where it was stuck in the web while trying not to weaken the web overall. Upon seeing her taking the staff, the alpha cursed at her saying, “Stop thief, that is mine. Get your dirty hands off it.” His struggles against the webbing became even more frantic. Yet she paid him no heed as she spun around to see if she could find a spot to hit the beast. While she had been cutting the staff loose, Dave had apparently shifted their fight enough that he was able to pick up the sword with his free hand. Since the sword had not been on his person when he cast the enlarge spell, it had not grown and so was more like a short sword to the nine-foot-tall fighter. He used it as such, plunging it once, twice, and then a third time into the side of the beast. Each time a critical wound was scored, and finally, the third thrust found its way into the drake hound’s beating heart. A full foot of steel was shoved through the life-giving organ and the hound was ended.

  Exhausted, Dave rolled the beast off and onto the ground while struggling to his feet. He had taken even more wounds and was now down to barely more than 25% of his total health. So tired, in fact, that he didn’t initially hear the sizzling sound coming from the beast’s corpse nor the way it was rapidly bloating and distorting. A moment too late, he finally realized that it was about to explode, and while he didn’t know about its acidic blood, he had no sense that such an explosion would be good for him or more importantly for Mira. He turned his body so that his back was to the corpse and used himself as a human shield just as the drake hound exploded in a spray of acidic revenge. He heard himself screaming but only knew pain in that moment, unable to focus on anything else his body fell forward pushing Mira and his arm into the zone border. To this day, Dave doesn’t remember accepting the prompt to cross into the Merkwood, but he must have because when he came to, he was on the back of a horse being carried like a sack of potatoes.

  Krinnk rushed as fast as his little legs would carry him back to the human village. He carefully crossed the bridge taking him into Eastern Albia and began sneaking like only a goblin can sneak. His thoughts were racing more frantically than at any time he could remember. Strange notions crossed his mind. He wanted the little elfling, but he couldn’t quite understand what was driving him. Yes, he wanted her shiny and yes, she looked tasty to eat, but there was more to it. Something about being out so long on his own, without the stability, such as it was, of his tribe was affecting him. The heightened density of mana in the forest here was something that he was not used to. Even then, though, there was more. He saw how the family, even the big scary one with the sword and the half-elf who shot fire out of her hands all looked after the little elfling. No one in a goblin village looked out for you. Even your mother couldn’t be trusted. Sure, there was an instinct that drove them to nurse and feed the newborns but that only lasted a few weeks until goblin spawn were considered old enough to care for themselves. Then they had to scratch and claw and bite for everything they got just as all the other goblins did. Something in how they interacted caused a longing in Krinnk. It was an emotion that was foreign to him. He didn’t know how to handle it and so his hairbrained scheme for taking the little elfling and her shiny for himself was born.

  As he was quietly making his way down the road as quickly as he could, he was passed by a horse riding along with the fire elf girl riding on its back and the big man draped over the horse behind her like saddlebags. He wanted to shriek in frustration. No, no, no. Why were they back so soon? They were going to ruin everything. Only his discipline, a fear-based discipline that had been beaten into him kept him from screaming aloud and exposing himself. Now he would have to wait. He would find a place to hide and bide his time, ready to pounce from the shadows.

  A cluster of a dozen women were gathered around a cooking station that some of the men had set up for Emily in the town square. They used one of the fire pits that had been created for the recent celebration. An iron tripod was set up over top of the fire, which was now mostly just a bed of very hot coals. Hanging from the tripod was a copper cooking pot and Emily was discussing sanitation and various cooking methods with the women. It has been a great afternoon. She had always loved teaching nutrition classes in various third world countries when she went on summer mission trips. This was a whole new level of challenge. On her trips, they would usually bring modern tools and cooking equipment that they would train the villagers how to use and then leave for them. Lots of companies loved to get tax write-offs by donating their products for uses such as that. Now though, they had relatively primitive instruments to work with. The women of Eris’ Rise were a good, open-hearted group of people, but none of them that she had met so far could read or write more than to scratch their names out and certainly not a one of them had any idea what she was talking about when she said words like sanitation or bacteria. Still, it wasn’t that hard to work with them. The women all listened to her and looked at her with an awe bordering on fear. She knew that many of them were uncomfortable with the fact that she was an elf and were bothered by her exotic appearance. Many had asked to see the mark of Shanelle on her hand, but once a few had seen it, they all seemed to take it for a fact. She couldn’t help but wonder a bit about why everyone was so deferential to a priestess. It raised a lot of questions in her mind about the role of the church in these people’s lives.

  Her lecturing was interrupted by Talvenicus running out from the city hall and yelling for everyone to find her. Since she heard his cry herself, she went running to him, assuming that something must be wrong with Aloysia or one of city council members. She had a hard time believing it could be anything too serious. The Merkwood might be terrifyingly dangerous but Eris’ Rise was the very definition of a sleepy little country village. Moreover, the people of Eloria seemed exceptionally resilient and had vastly superior innate healing to what she was accustomed to on earth. Still, as she ran, so many fears started going through her head. Sara was with her, bored, but still safely back at the cooking station. She didn’t know where Jackson, Mira, or Dave were though.

  It didn’t take long for her to reach the mayor, simply a matter of crossing the town square. Her heightened Agility had allowed her to sprint across the few hundred feet that separated them in seconds. “What’s wrong, mayor?” she asked simply, not even breathing hard from the short sprint.

  The mayor seemed flustered. “Mira is apparently bringing your husband back. He was seriously injured.”

  Then turning to the collection of town boys that had come out upon hearing his shouting, he said, “She is leading a horse down the path into town. All of you boys run out and guide her here.”

  “Daughter of Redemption, don’t worry. Gertrude has already gone to get clean bandages and supplies from her home and both Conrad and Jarvis are helping her.”

  “How could this happen? I thought they were just going out exploring today?” Emily’s mind was already conjuring worst-case scenarios.

  The mayor could only shrug as if to say he had no idea. At least they didn’t have long to wait. First, Gertrude arrived followed by the two other councilors carrying arms full of any supplies that the herbalist had thought might possibly be necessary to help their new sheriff. Just a couple of minutes after that and a pack of boys were running back into the town square announcing that the horse was just behind them.

  Turning toward the road in from the river, Emily soon saw one of Mira’s conjured horses come around one of the houses and into sight. Her firstborn daughter was riding the horse and behind her laid across the horse was what appeared to be a man’s body. “Oh God, no! Please don’t let him be dead.” She didn’t wait for the horse to get to them but ran toward them. Running up to the side of the horse, she was horrified. The back of Dave’s armor was essentially destroyed, hanging on only by tatters on his shoulders. What was beneath the ruined armor was something else entirely. She had years of experience as a nurse, but nothing had prepared her for seeing this. Undoubtedly it had something to do with the
fact that it was her husband. Even without that distinction, the ruined mess of his back would have horrified her. Portions of the skin were melted so that it looked like melted wax in the process of cooling. In other places, the armor and skin were mingled together by the acid. She could see patches of muscle, exposed tendons and even the edge portions of some bones. Emily had never seen wounds even close to this other than in nursing school. She recognized what had to be the most severe acid burns she could imagine. Such wounds would never have been possible on earth because anyone who received wounds like this would have been dead. It was only Dave’s increased Constitution that was allowing him to survive. Not that it was likely he would want to be alive. The only saving grace was that he was unconscious, undoubtedly from shock. Even as she thought that, Dave moved his head and let out a low groan.

  Grateful for the sign that he was still alive but terrified of what it would mean for him psychologically if he woke with such wounds as this, Emily quickly instructed that his body be removed from the horse and carried into the city hall. The meeting table there would have to suffice for a place to lay him. Orders started to roll out of her as she got Gertrude to sterilize the table and another of the women to start laying out rolls of clean cloth bandages. They wanted a clean padded surface to lay him on. At the same time, she queried Mira about what had happened, urging her past any self-recriminations to a simple summary of the attack on Dave as well as what she had been doing to keep him alive to this point. It seemed that her Lesser Regeneration spell was barely keeping him alive, but at least it was helping him to hold on. Mira had had the clarity of thought to sink 10 of her stored character points into Essence Magic. Her Lesser Regeneration had healed 10 health per 6 seconds for 2 minutes each time she had cast it. She had only had enough mana to cast it four times and that was only able to keep up with the secondary damage that the acid did in the minutes after the initial explosion. Mira had been forced to choose between casting another regeneration spell or conjuring a mount to carry them back to town. Since her relatively weak half-elven form would never have been able to move her father’s two-hundred-pound plus body, not to mention all of his gear, she had had to conjure the horse. She just had been trusting that her mother would be able to fix Dad.

  With an abbreviated understanding of what had happened, Emily went to work casting magic, utilizing Gertrude’s tonics to both sterilize and aid in the healing, and doing more than a little praying. The techniques that she had learned when healing the loggers with cauterized wounds served her well now. She was able to treat the acid burns in much the same way. Pushing skin and tissue together and then forcing healing magic into the flesh. As more of the healing took hold and the simpler wounds were repaired, Dave showed signs of waking and starting to move, which threatened to tear open much of her work.

  “Gertrude, do you have anything that will make him sleep deep enough for me to be able to finish healing him?”

  Gertrude smiled, showing a mouth with only half its original teeth. “Oh, for sure. I’ve got everything from a bit of Tadpole Spit for making the little ones rest when they are teething to a brewed sleeping potion. That takes a bit more effort to make but is strong enough to put down a horse for eight hours. Ought to work well enough on the sheriff.”

  Emily liked Gertrude. She had only known the older woman for a few days, but she already reminded her of so many of the no-nonsense women that she had seen leading in third world countries on Earth. Often times those women were not the public leaders but more the de facto glue that held the communities together. “Please give him however much of the sleeping potion that is safe for him and will keep him asleep all night.”

  Normally, Emily would have wanted to know more about the potion. How it was made, the proper dosage and safety guidelines. Now, however, she just wanted Dave to stop moving so that she could heal him. She was already getting tired and feeling that her mana was drained and that was with the impressive amount of mana regeneration that she had from her ring. Emily worked throughout the night, not finishing up until less than an hour before first sunrise. Gertrude had stayed up with her, providing her with water and a weak stimulant to keep her awake all night. It had been worth it though, for over eight hours and more than 7000 mana later the tattered remains of Dave’s back were smooth and flawless skin without so much as a scar to show for it. Hospitals and doctors all over the Earth would have gone to any lengths to have the sort of healing powers that she now possessed, yet here in this primitive society without so much as simple antibiotics, miracles were available at her fingertips. The last thought which crossed her mind before she fell asleep draped across Dave’s back was the pleasant image of how some of the doctors she knew would have reacted to seeing what she could do now.

  Chapter Thirty

  “A child believes his parents are larger than life, then that they are hopeless idiots. The beginning of maturity is to see that they are neither.” —Albian proverb.

  While Emily spent the night healing Dave, Mira first did the responsible thing and took her younger siblings back to the mayor’s home to make sure they ate dinner and then got into bed. Sara seemed pretty tired and for once didn’t fight going to bed on the condition that she got to cuddle up next to Mira. It didn’t really surprise Mira that Sara was clingy, not after seeing the condition their dad had been in and she hadn’t had to live through the entire experience. Part of Mira wanted to be mad at her dad for going into the dungeon in the first place. He was supposed to be so knowledgeable about this type of world, but she really couldn’t muster up the anger. She was just too concerned for him. Still, what their mom had done with the loggers had been nothing short of miraculous, so Mira would just have to trust that Mom could do the same for him. The irony of the teenage mind is that while they are often given to angst about trivial aspects of life and peer interactions, at another level, they never consider the frailties of life, instead unconsciously assuming a certain level of immortality.

  While lying there with Sara, Mira went through the relevant notifications she had gotten from the fight. She knew she had gained a level because she felt the surge of power going through her, which had restored her mana to full and had made it possible for her to cast more healing spells than she would have otherwise been able to. The 80 XP she gained wasn’t impressive, but she had only needed twenty to make it to level 14 so it was enough. Without either of her parents here to argue with her about it, Mira split her stat points, 2 into Constitution and 1 into Wisdom. Seeing the close-quarters combat in the dungeon and her ever-increasing analytical ability made it obvious that she would eventually need some more health and the need for increased mana regeneration was obvious as well. Something about not having her parents telling her what to decide made it easier for Mira to make the right decision.

  As soon as Sara had fallen asleep, Mira disengaged her arm and slid away without waking her sister. She was just dying for the chance to examine the staff she had taken from the monster. She could tell it had some magical properties but wasn’t sure what they were. Pulling it from where she had secured it to the back of her pack, she started running her hands over its length. The shaft of the staff was about five feet long and perfectly smooth. It appeared to be made of ivory and had intricate carvings up and down its length. At the tip, firmly nestled into the material of the staff was a thumb-sized amber jewel surrounded by three fingernail shaped clear pieces of crystal. Mira took the staff in both hands and practiced swinging it through the air. It was very light and had a great deal of flexibility to it but didn’t seem likely to break at all.

  Soon though, Mira realized she wasn’t going to be able to learn anything more about the staff by just examining it. She needed her dad and his magic to identify objects, but she didn’t want to wait until he was better to find out what this staff did. Well, there was no help for it, she would just have to take her chances and spend character points on Divination magic. She decided to go with the full 20 points because who knew what cool tier 2 spell
she might get. She crossed her fingers, a gesture which her much increased Intelligence told her was pointless, and assigned the points, hoping she would get the Identify spell.

  This time luck was with her, and she ended up with Identify and Assess Enemy just like her dad had. She also got a 2nd tier 2 spell.

  Lesser Telepathic Detection: Used to locate and identify intelligent minds. Only works on minds with Intelligence score of 8 or greater. Can detect the presence of such minds within up to 10’/level. Can identify the Intelligence score of one of those minds per tick so long as the score is no more than 20% greater than the caster's Intelligence. After 1 minute of concentration may read the surface thoughts of a single target’s mind. May not be attuned to read the thoughts of another target without a new casting. Duration: 1 minute/level. Range: 10’/level or 6”/level for mind reading. Cooldown: 3 hours. Mana: 70.

  Mira probably would have been more impressed with her new spell if she hadn’t been so focused on being able to cast Identify on her new staff. With a wave of her hand and a few quickly muttered words, Mira cast Identify and her eyes lit up.

  Drake Thigh Bone Staff.

  Quality: Excellent.

  Base Dmg: 7. Attack Speed: 4.

  Weight: 3.0.

  Active Effect 1: Mage Shield - may conjure a shield with a radius of 5’ to protect caster and those close by. Shield can absorb up to 200 damage. Mana may be channeled into the shield to increase damage absorption at a ratio of 2 damage per 1 mana. 2/moon rise.

  Active Effect 2: 3 magicyte crystals embedded in the staff can each store a single evocation spell of up to 2nd tier for quick casting. May be recharged. Spells currently stored: Minor Shock x2.