Bodies lay strewn across the landscape, but rather than rotting, they appear to be simply dissolving into goo and vanishing. I try to get a good look at the flows of energy around them and how they’re slowly draining toward the core, but it’s hard to analyze in detail from this distance.
Sitting safely inside the village and crafting, it’s easy to forget that there’s a yearly monster invasion going on outside. The Elite teenagers attending Crux Academy aren’t just back home for the holidays to spend time with family, but to help defend their village and get some practical combat experience. Basil here is no longer a teenager, but he’s still Elite rank and on the wall keeping watch for incoming undead.
“Hi Drake,” says Basil. “Want to throw rocks at monsters?”
“Yeah, sure,” I say, picking up one that will fit in my palm from the pile next to him.
I hurl the stone with all of my 9 Strength, and it goes flying through the air and drops like, well, a stone. It lands in the moist ground with a soft thump a few meters away from the wall and well short of the zombie I was aiming for.
Basil claps me on the shoulder. “Give it another shot! Don’t worry about wasting ammo. Not like it’s hard to collect rocks. We go out and gather them again between waves.”
I chuck a few more rocks from the wall and eventually manage to nail a shambler square in the head. It collapses with a crunching sound.
The ability to throw a rock and use a sling aren’t at all the same thing, but neither is the ability to build a kayak versus a galleon. And I guess they must have some sort of fear effect? I hadn’t actually noticed. I spend entirely too much time around fire-breathing devil-goats to be intimidated by zombies that can’t even reach me from there.
I spend many, many mind-numbling hours making wooden beads while watching as a tiny speck of essence gets deposited into each and every one of them. Rain pounds on the roof of the workshop and runs down the windows. As I work, I’m trying to absorb the concept of crafting from the building around me and concentrate it into my hands.
Once I’ve made all the beads, I start painting them in different colors. I’m not calling this game “Chinese checkers” but that’s basically what I’m making a version of. I’ll call it “jumping beads” or something. I don’t know how to make marbles but it’s always good to get some crafting experience in.
There we go. I’ll take whatever bonus I can get on that. I anticipate having to make a lot of nails and things in the future. Once I’m done with the beads, I make a wooden board full of pits and make sure they can all fit a bead. There might be a little bit of variance here and there, but that’s fine so long as they fit.
Now for the hard part: Teaching a bunch of small children how to play a game I barely remember. Fortunately, since it’s not like they know the game either, I can just make things up and they won’t know the difference. And it’s not like this is a deep game or anything.
“Another game!” Griffin says in excitement when I present it.
“How do you play?” Willow asks.
“We each pick a color of beads, and try to get all our beads to the opposite side of the board,” I say. “You can move them by one space, like this, or you can jump over another bead, like this.”
I demonstrate as I explain the rules, with three children at six and a half years old watching me raptly, aunts and uncles in the background all keeping one eye on us.
“I wanna play too!” says Clover. Meadow’s sister’s daughter is three and a half years old now.
“Okay, but be careful and don’t try to eat the beads,” says Basil.
“I’m not gonna eat them,” Clover insists. “I’m not a baby!”
I feel like having a system in their heads might change child development somehow. Having not actually raised normal, systemless children back on Earth, I couldn’t tell you exactly how. Although system or no, being raised in a weird magitech house that sees monster invasions every year probably affects things as well.
We play my new game and the kids quickly get the hang of it. Basil helps Clover, who does not try to eat any of the beads. Griffin, on the other hand, is taking the excuse to work on his Subterfuge skills.
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“That’s not how you’re supposed to move them,” Willow says.
“Is so!” Griffin protests.
“Drake, Griffin’s cheating again!”
“Now, Griffin, you have to remember,” I say slowly. “If you’re going to cheat, don’t get caught.”
Griffin nods along to my sage wisdom.
“That’s not really the lesson I’d be teaching here…” Basil says with a chuckle.
“Someday I’m hoping to be able to rely on this kid to pick a lock or disarm a trap for me,” I say. “He’s got a few months left to his first real class and I have this feeling he’s going to be a [Sneaky Child].”
Griffin grins widely and keeps nodding. And while we’re talking, I notice that he has quietly rearranged some of the game pieces when he thought no one was looking.
“Alright, new rule,” I say. “If someone notices you cheat, you have to put your pieces back where they belong and you skip your next turn. Fair?”
No one is happy about my ruling, so I’m going to assume that it’s fair.
On Raven’s naming day, Uncle Falcon comes down the stairs into the hearth with a grim expression on his face. He’s been up looking at the mural at least once a day since Aunt Myrtle left, looking to see if his mom is still alive. He tries not to ruin the party, but there’s always a party going on in the hearth it seems like and everyone can see how glum he looks.
“We don’t have a body, so we can’t inter her in the core room to be reabsorbed into Corwen,” Uncle Falcon says quietly. “But we can hold a memorial. Another day. Mom wouldn’t want to put herself before a child’s naming day.”
My own naming day follows shortly, and I spend the interim grinding more skills, of course. My next project is drawing blueprints while doing math in my head to measure angles and circles. I do not remember what a cosine is, but perhaps if I get my skills high enough, the system will remind me.
When it stops raining, I climb up to the top of the central tower to look out at the sky. The many flights of stairs are no longer such a trial for me, being older and having long enough legs that I don’t need to crawl up them. The memory of the first time I climbed these steps brings a grin to my face. The November air is chilly and the floor is damp, but the skies are mostly clear now but for some stormclouds off to the southwest.
This strange world I’ve spent eight years of my life in is beautiful in its own way. I miss the stars and sun, but it’s a deep-seated yearning that can never be fulfilled. The Great Orb takes up much of the sky, but it’s the dark season now and I can’t see the color “dark”. My human eyes don’t extend into the near-infrared range. Instead, I see only the gleaming skymotes shedding yellow and orange light upon their own domains, and Zenith hanging in the sky to the northwest.
I breathe deeply and open myself to my surroundings, and draw the beauty of the Crystalline Heavens into myself. It takes a bit, but I keep at it. I know what I’m aiming for even if I don’t quite have a name for it yet.
I think I’ve finally found the Inspiration skill for me. (I say “finally” but I’ve only been trying to think of this for a year.) The skymotes go dark one by one, but the sky never goes completely empty as some of them are starting to turn violet long before the last ones have stopped being red.
And that’s a good signal to head for bed. I’ve been up here meditating for entirely too long and I’m freezing though I didn’t really feel it. Okay, hot herbal tea, and then bed. I’d best be up in the morning for a party because Griffin’s not going to let me sleep in.
I feel like I’ve hardly closed my eyes before Griffin is bouncing on my bed to wake me up.
“Come on, Drake!” Griffin says, hopping so much that he looks like he’s trying to eke out the last level of Athletics (Jumping) before he turns 7.
“Ugh, let me sleep a few more minutes,” I grumble.
“It’s already green!” Griffin says. “The party’s not starting until you get up!”
“It’s not even your naming day,” I say, reluctantly getting out of bed.
Over in the hearth, a gaggle of Corwens all wish me a happy naming day and offer presents. I quickly accumulate a small pile of sweets, books, clothes, and Basic crafting materials.
My sister gives me her latest piece of artwork (a crayon drawing of me, Anise, Juniper, Griffin, and Willow all geared up for adventuring) showcasing that she probably already has level 5 in Crafting (Sketching). If not, I’m sure this drawing was enough to level it up.
I have no idea what my mom might find “fun” to acquire for me during swarm season.
“You know how people sometimes say something is going to be fun and build up anticipation and then they can’t think of anything fun?” Anise says.
“Look, I’m not going to be upset if you didn’t get me the most amazing naming day gift ever,” I say. “I’m just as happy with the box of apple candies Aunt Hazel made me.”
“Here it is,” Anise says, handing me a small wooden box. “Go on and open it.”
I open it up to see a claw hammer, the typical sort of hammer with a flat face on one side for pounding things in and two prongs on the back for prying things out. It looks like something I would have found in a hardware store back on Earth rather than anything someone might have made today, which immediately marks it as dungeon loot even before I identify it.
“Cool, a hammer!”
“I’m glad you like it. When people get dungeon drops they don’t need, they go up for sale in the adventuring store. And we don’t have a lot of dedicated crafters who need a low level hammer.”
Lily looks over and says, “Oh, hey, yeah, that dropped for my party in the Hunting Grounds a few months ago. At least someone will find it useful for a while, but I’m sure you’ll outgrow Basic tools in a few years.”
Another year draws to a close with streaking lights, hauntingly familiar songs, and the sky turning violet.