17) Out and about

  “Take it easy on me Fell, you were too rough last time.”

  I sighed internally as Viola almost laid her hand on my Core, then flinched away, again, before finally setting her hand to me as she reached out with her vision. I had agreed to simply ride along with her magic this time to view areas within our demesne.

  Which comprised the area surrounding my Dungeon, all the way out to the limit of the three hundred feet around its outer border, not from my Core itself. Me and my Dungeon were one.

  I’m not sure how that would work with any living Core that might come after me, but that was how it seemed to work for a Summoner Core.

  Following her limited line of sight meant that I could see through her eyes like they were my own. Which turned out to be enlightening.

  I had not been aware there were in fact, that many colors, and said so.

  While sharing her sight, my Core became blind, but I could see her proud smile through Caesar, my innate summons, eyes. “Yeah Fell. Ten thousand colors, shades, and blends. Fairies need to see all of that to track the health of plants, the suitability of the light, and for looking for trace materials in the soil. Fairying is a complex job, we're not just all pretty faces.”

  With her eyes, the contents of Nictob’s chamber looked quite different. Not only his, now mine, junk and furniture, but the walls, the ceiling, even most of the floor...

  Sigils. Mystical writing within the multiple circles all around the room. All of them charged up with magic, and all of them doing things beyond my understanding.

  But ...inyond? Is that a word? How about within? Yes, within my understanding was that each Sigil held a finite amount of magic, and whatever they were doing, whatever purpose they served, was slowly draining it.

  I was guessing they would be out of magic in days, not hours, but I would have to check on them later to say for sure.

  After looking around the room, Viola turned her sight towards the door. “Alright partner, let’s take this outside.”

  Ir shared line of sight, which seemed so limited with only being able to see in one direction went through the door in a moment of darkness, then out into the hallway outside Nictob’s chamber.

  Two doors, as battered and old as the one in my chamber stood to the right, while another door, thicker, newer, and barred from the hallway side stood to the left.

  There was a slot carved up high on the door, but Viola’s sight carried us past it without stopping, and I had promised not to try to direct her sight.

  At the top of the steps, we swept down to pass the ashes and scraps of burned flesh out to a worked stone tunnel with a narrow channel carrying a slow trickle of water down to a hole in the floor on the far right, and falling out of a square hole in the ceiling in a steady flow of liquid before pooling in a round depression in the ground with the channel running out of it.

  Beyond this was a small door, made for perhaps a child, that stood high up on a wall. While the small door was even thicker than the ones in Nictob’s chambers, it was even in worse shape.

  The Fairy’s vision took us up to the door, then bounced off it, twice. “No good Fell, the other side must belong to someone else, but the thing is in such bad shape I think it would have fallen apart if someone had opened it in the last hundred years.”

  That seems rather limited. “Why can’t you use your vision on someone else’s property?”

  I could see Viola shrug through Caesar’s eyes. “Blame it on the Lawkeeper. You need invitations to cross thresholds. Everywhere else down here is a public space, or just unclaimed. Which is good news for you.”

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  “Hrm. Can you look up that hole?”

  “Yeppers!”

  The square hold turned out to be a shaft that rose up several stories to show a thin sliver of blue sky high above.

  Then Viola darted her vision out of the way of a sudden deluge of something falling from a pipe that drained into the shaft and splashed down into the round shallow pit below it.

  The Fairy narrowed her eyes. “You aren’t supposed to dump solid trash down here. Ew, what are those?”

  The pile of bones and what looked to be the chopped off ends of vegetables had dozens of clear slugs slowly closing in on the pit, each living behind a trail of thin slime that glittered like jewels in the Fairy’s vision.

  “I think the solid trash issue is being taken care of Viola. ...do you think those things have Cores.”

  She almost lifted her hands away from me, “What? No! They’re like bugs, slimy bugs. I don’t think anything that small has a Core. Besides you can see through them, you would be able to see a core. ….I think.”

  Could Cores be transparent? Meh. If these things are worth Merit points even without a Core, then let them grow for a bit, and then I can destroy them.

  Next, the Fairy took our sight down the hall to the deeper pit the channel drained down, and we could see the ladder like slots carved into the wall of the tube like hole that went down twenty or so feet, and a pile of burnt bits. “Looks like he dropped down here Fell, do you want to keep going?”

  Do I? “Viola, can others see… us. See whatever it is you are sending out like this?”

  The Fairy went stiff. “I… I don’t know. I meant I haven’t ever heard of anyone being able to see my Gaze, but I haven’t heard anything about anyone not being able to see it. I know I can see other fairy’s Gazes, but we see everything. That’s our job.”

  Tracking down the corpse was tempting, but I had the feeling it was long gone. “We might be better off getting ready for anything it might lead our way. Take us back to the lair, I want to see what's behind those doors Viola.”

  It was a little dizzying with only one point of view for the Fairy to spin us around to return to the bottom of the steps. Or at least where I had thought the bottom of the steps were.

  Instead, Viola turned her gaze from side to side, showing only a somewhat filthy wall, without any sign of the stairs we had come down.

  The Fairy began to panic, “Fell! We’re lost. Trapped. I can’t get us back… oh, yeah.”

  She pulled her hands away from my Core and then looked embarrassed. Scratching at the back of her head she wandered off a bit, refusing to look back at me.

  Like always, “I’m not going to say anything. Nictob must have hidden the stairs from sight with a higher magic. We must have just missed seeing the Sigil. Are you up to continuing?”

  The Fairy laughed. “Yeah! Arcanists are tricky. I can keep going.”

  Once again sharing her Gaze with me, she took us back through the door and to the top of the stairs, from where we could see twin lines filled with runes and mathematical formulas lining the ceiling, walls, and floor just inside the bottom of the stairway.

  Also slowly draining of magic.

  Keeping that Sigil working, suddenly seems very time sensitive. “Viola, can we pass on magic through your Gaze?”

  She laughed “I don’t know. We can try.”

  We could not, nor could my normal summons. But Caesar could. And it only took three points of magic from my pool through the fire lizard's snout to fully recharge the Sigil, for however long that might last.

  “Now I would like to see what is on the other side of the Barred door Viola.”

  She raised her gaze up to the open slot of the door, and I beheld the monster within.