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  [colpse]Chapter Fifty-Five - Revetions

  “It’s beautiful,” I said.

  Gunther shifted a little, the pliment making his deathly pale skin flush just a tiny bit. “It is adequate,” he said.

  The painting was fairly simple, with a stone wall illuminated by torchlight behind both myself and Amaryllis. It reminded me just a little of Ameri Gothic, but Amaryllis was the only one scowling, her sharp eyes looking at me sideways and there was just a hint of humor in her gaze, probably a trick of Gunther’s brushstrokes that made her eyes pinch at the ers.

  Standing to Amaryllis’ left was a Broccoli Bunch that I hardly reized. Sure, that was my smile, the one I always wore when taking a picture with a friend. And I had my trusty spade over my shoulder and my bandoleer on and my spear held up by my side. But something had ged. There was a lot of happihere, but also... guilt. “It’s really nice,” I repeated.

  I hated lying.

  “You take it with you, if you want. I merely he practice,” Gunther said.

  “We couldn’t,” I said.

  “Nonse e nothing to make,” Gunther insisted.

  “No, I meaerally ’t. It’s too big to carry through the ss. It’ll get all mushy,” I said.

  Amaryllis poked the painting and it poofed away. “There. Done. Favour’s paid, painting is in ste, sun is still shining. We should go.”

  “Amaryllis!” I said. “That was rude. Gunther’s a friend.”

  “No, no, she is correct. Rude, but correct. If you io reach Green Hold by nightfall then it would be best if you left now. A direct route west-southwest will have you interseg the road leading into the town in... oh, six, seven hours at a fast jog?”

  That was a lot of jogging. “Um, but that would mean just... leaving, like that.”

  Gunther’s smile was a little wry, but it was still genuine. “Yes. But no worries, I’m certain we’ll meet again someday. Else I suppose I’ll read of your exploits in some book of myths and tales.”

  Amaryllis snorted. “Hardly,” she said before eyeing Gunther. “You weren’t all that bad, for a neancer.”

  “And you’re passably tolerable, for a harpy,” Gunther replied just as easily.

  “Aww, yetting along,” I said.

  Amaryllis huffed and walked past me. “I’ll be waiting outside.”

  I watched her go for a moment before turning back to Gunther. “It really was o meet you-- and Throat Ripper,” I said. I walked over to the big bony lump. The doggy was ying on his side and looked asleep... or maybe just more dead, though one of his eyes started to glow when I started patting his side. “Thanks for your help earlier,” I said.

  He replied with a thump-a-thump of his tail so I gave him some extra pats.

  “Be safe, and may the world watch over your journey,” Gunther said.

  I smiled. “And may it, um, watch over you as well?” I said.

  He ughed. “Ask your friend about prreetings, I’m sure she talk your ears off about it. Good luck, Broccoli Bunch. We’ll see each ain, I’m certain.”

  I found Amaryllis eyeing a skeletal harpy, her head tilted to the side as she stared at the only bird-like skeleton in the area. I looked at its thin-boned arms and the way its legs ected to a strange pair of thin hips, then I eyed Amaryllis who was, by then, gring at me.

  “Stop staring at me like I’m some sort of chi,” she said.

  “Um, but aren’t you just a little bit chi?” I gestured at her white hair ahers.

  Amaryllis squawked and stomped off and out of the fort so fast I had to jog to keep up. “A chi! She calls a member of the purebred Albatross family a bloody chi? Why world? Why did you saddle me with this idiot?” Amaryllis asked the skies.

  “Is being called a chi an insult?” I asked.

  It was a strange way to start our voyage back, but Amaryllis' loud aure-filled rant about the inferiority of the Chi d how they did little more than scratch at the dirt all day a grubs, was eaining at least.

  Apparently humans weren’t the only ohat didn’t like is in their lunch. Most harpies were on the same page.

  With e poung ahead of us to scout, we moved down the same path we had that m. Amaryllis’ rant only stopped when we recrossed the bridge. Nothing happehough, and soon we were walking along at a good clip treen Hold.

  Amaryllis went dull-eyed for a moment, then scowled at the air. “I’m going to be hitting my css evolution soon. I’ll need a sed css in abeyance if I want to keep progressing.”

  “What’s that mean?” I asked.

  “It means that... if you decide to remain my partner in the guild, which if you have any wisdom in that thick human skull of yours you will, we’ll have to make a detour to a suitable duo pick up a sed css.”

  So, sed csses were a thing for real then. “And what’s a css evolution?”

  Amaryllis stopped walking so suddenly that I took three steps before notig. I lowered my spear and started to prepare some ing magic.

  “How do you not know that?” she asked. She was eyeing me like I was a bunny and she was a hungry bird of prey. “Everyone knows about it, even peasants. Especially peasants si’s what keeps them that way.”

  “Is it that big a deal?” I asked.

  “It’s the only way to level past ten. Without guards and warriors in the sed tier and beyond civilization would colpse in a week.”

  “Wait, you ’t level past ten without an evolution thing?” I asked. I was beginning to worry. What if they were really expensive?

  “Broccoli,” Amaryllis said. “Where are you from? How did you survive with su abysmal education?”

  “Ah,” I said as I hesitated. I didn’t want to share too muo, that wasn’t it. I was afraid to share too much because that knowledge might shove a wedge between Amaryllis and I. But now my ck of knowledge was doing the same thing. “It’s a long story?” I tried.

  “It’s a long walk.”

  “Right.” There went that excuse. I decided that I might as well bite the bullet. “Do you know what a riftwalker is?”

  “Yes... no,” she decred. Suddenly she was eyeing me up and down as if I had started dang a naked jig. “You are not... oh but that would expin a lot.”

  “So you know what a riftwalker is? Gunther knew, somehow. He was very mysterious about it, but he didn’t seem to think it was a bad thing.”

  “The only person for whom it’s bad is me. If some of the professors bae learhat I was with a riftwalker and didn’t questiohhly they would clip my wings and fling me off the highest tower in Farseeing.” Amaryllis spped her talons over her face. “That expins why you’re so wildly inpetent at everything.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  Amaryllis went on. “Your plete cluelessness about magic. Ynorance about the local cultures. And to think I thought that you were merely stru the head.”

  “That’s rude, I think,” I said.

  “You must be from some inprehensibly backwards world where the young are coddled and protected,” Amaryllis said.

  “Hey! ada’s not... too backwards. We have the i in some pces,” I defended.

  Amaryllis made a high-pitched trilling noise, ohat I had never heard from her before. “Well, now I’m slightly less disappoihat we’ve bee... friends.”

  She had been disappointed? “You are?”

  “Oh yes. The st Riftwalker that I learned about was an unassuming man of little talent and worth, or so every test suggested,” she said.

  “That doesn’t inspire much fidence,” I said.

  “He went on to be a professor of the Snownd’s greatest academy and piohe creation of the gravitigihat airships use today. That was some hundred-odd years ago.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  Now the glint in Amaryllis’ eyes looked kind of scary.

  “Well, don’t expeything like that from me,” I said. “I think I already did the thing this world wanted. But we still be friends anyway.”

  Amaryllis defted a little. “Truly?” I nodded. “Well, regardless, you’re still a trove of possibly iing, if mundane, facts.”

  “I’ll tell you about my world if you help me learn about the magic you use here,” I said.

  “Deal!” Amaryllis said. She puffed out her chest, and when she began walking again it was with something of a strut. She really did remind me of a chi. “With me at the helm of your education you’ll have caught up to the world’s standard in no time.”

  “Awesome!” I said with a ugh as I jogged to keep up. “So, what’s a css evolution?”

  She waved a hand dismissively through the air. “A css evolves when it hits its tenth level. This is universal across all csses that I’m aware of. At that point, the wifts you with some choices on how you guide your future development. Some require certain as to be taken beforehand, others are more on and are avaible to everyone. Most csses have the default option to tih the same css.”

  “Okay?” I said. “So... level tes you evolve your css. Got it. I’ve met a lot of Grenoil who are Fencers, is that because they all evolve into that?”

  “No. There’s a dungeon in Deepmarsh, the capital, that gives ahat clears it the Fencer css. It’s a low-level dungeon, purposefully kept that way so that younger grenoil obtain the css. For a lesser gold you be escorted to the boss and someone will beat it o death for you,” Amaryllis said. “By participating in the fight you repain css with Fencer, which is what quite a few grenoil set out to do. It’s a well-doted css with some clear and easy progressions.”

  I couldn’t keep the smile off my face as I listehese were the kinds of things I wao know for a while now. “So, back to the evolution thing. a Fencer bee a Sword Dancer?”

  Amaryllis nodded slowly, as if uain. “I think that’s one of the css evolutions from Fencer, but with a focus on two bdes?”

  “That sounds right. I met a grenoil from the exploration guild that had two swords and that css,” I said. “So when I get to level ten I’ll get to pick from a bunch of csses?”

  “It depends on your aplishments, but essentially, yes. There are some progressions that are very well doted. Fire and Thunder Mages for example. There’s another evolution at level twenty, and every ten levels after that.”

  “Brilliant. I ’t wait to find out what my css will evolve into,” I said.

  “Probably something suitably droll. Your css sounds like something a peasant might obtain from ing the vatory.”

  “You get csses from ing vatories?” I asked. “I thought you o fight a dungeon boss.”

  Amaryllis sighed. “No. Your first css is always a gift of the world. And it’s usually awful. That’s why I switched to Thunder Mage about a year ago.”

  “What were you before?” I asked.

  “That doesn’t matter,” she said with a lofty wave of her hand. “As ht now, I’m level nine, which means my evolution approaches. O’s done I’ll be bottlenecked until I unlock a sed css and start levelling both it and my primary css again. The bottleneck will be at level twenty for the primary and ten for the sedary css.”

  “Okay?” I said as I tried to imagi. Maybe it was like those gss jars iry css, then the first one filled up the excess would pour through a spout to the sed and so on. Or maybe not.

  “I just o find a suitable duo tackle and I’ll be set for a while. We even share a sedary css, if you want to e along.”

  “That sounds like a lot of fun!” I said.

  I wasn’t too sure where my friendship with Amaryllis stood, but I was hoping for the best.

  ***

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