Now and then another carriage or cart passed them on the road, but without fail all their drivers looked weary and broken, their backs hunched and their expressions joyless.
Eventually Alisanne decided to ignore the outside world for a while and read through the manuals she’d gotten from Theikal.
Shimmying and contorting like a high level [Ballerina] into a different position that was as comfortable as she’d get in the cramped seat, Alisanne fished the manual for [Twirling Block] out of her bag and set it on her lap. The constant conversation all around her made it somewhat difficult to focus on the words, but she grit her teeth and forced herself to read through it.
While limited in application to physical projectiles, [Twirling Block] is a solid foundational defensive skill that can be of great use to any melee combat adventurer, and can eventually be upgraded to [Twirling Fortress], [Windmill Shield], or [Spinning Slam] depending on the user’s class. Talk to your [Guild Trainer] for more details if you’re interested in any of these upgrades and think you’re ready for them.
[Twirling Block] works by knocking projectiles out of the air, rendering them harmless by knocking them onto the ground. Be aware that some explosive projectiles – like the types often thrown by [Tinkers] or [Alchemists] – are explosive, and trying to deflect these with this skill can lead to the same consequences as not blocking at all. Users are urged to exercise their best judgement for whether any given attack is better blocked or avoided.
With time and practice this skill can be maintained indefinitely, providing an opportunity for the user to close the distance against a ranged foe, though it should be noted that most users find themselves slowed significantly while [Twirling Block] is active.
To activate this skill, the user should stand still with their feet approximately shoulder-width apart and their weapon held vertically in front of their bodies. While invoking the skill, the user should rely on their dominant hand to spin their weapon clockwise as quickly as they can without causing it to move forward or back, aiming to complete a full rotation before stopping in the vertical position once again. If the skill fails to activate, the user is to repeat the motion up to four more times before invoking the skill again. A successful attempt will see the user’s weapon glow green. A user is considered to have mastered the skill if they can get the weapon to glow during the first spin.
Common causes for failure:
- Spinning the weapon too slow
- Not holding the weapon straight while spinning it – users are recommended to lock their elbows and generate the spin from their wrists to make this easier. Additionally, asking for another person to confirm the weapon is straight before starting the first spin can be helpful as well.
The rest of the manual was dedicated to various diagrams that showed the motion from different angles, but Alisanne ignored them. She knew full well that she’d have to fumble through the motions herself until she got the hang of it.
Before she could start reading the next manual, the carriage slowed to a stop and the [Carriage Driver] – a portly man in a red vest who carried a rapier on his hip – jumped down to the ground.
“Rest break! Go ahead and stretch for the next half hour or so,” he bellowed, slapping the side of the carriage before raising his arms over his head. “Get a snack, relieve yourselves, do whatever you wish. We’ve made good time, so we should be at our stop for the night a little early.”
Various declarations of approval greeted the announcement, and Alisanne eagerly disembarked with the rest of the adventurers. The ground was damp but firm, and the air was pleasantly warm. Eating another of her mother’s muffins, Alisanne took a few steps and looked around, thinking of the [Carriage Driver]’s directions. When she saw nothing but field in all directions she found herself gripped by a novel horror that she’d never previously considered. There were no bathrooms out here.
Alisanne muttered a curse and started walking. She was a city girl, and the less said beyond that the better.
[Bravery +1]
Before they were slated to resume their journey, Alisanne took out her clubs and walked to an empty bit of field to stretch and exercise. Her shoulders and back were stiff, and Alisanne swung her weapons hard until they felt more normal again. It felt good to move, and she threw herself into the routine until the [Carriage Driver]’s voice rang out through the clearing.
“Five minutes until we leave! Five minutes!”
Alisanne swore under her breath. She’d been planning to start trying to learn [Twirling Block], but five minutes wasn’t enough time to make a proper attempt.
Still, she could at least go through the motions a few times and see what the first stumbling block would be. Spreading her feet apart, Alisanne stretched her right arm out and held her club up. It took some time to get straight. She jerked her hand to the right and stopped when her club was horizontal; her wrist didn’t want to turn any further.
Alisanne frowned. How the heck was she supposed to complete a spin from this position?
Well, at least it hadn’t taken long to find the first issue, Alisanne thought. She returned her club to its starting position and adjusted her grip so that she was holding it more with her fingertips than by her palm. Maybe she could start the spin with her wrist and then use her fingers to propel the weapon the rest of the way.
“Two Minutes! All passengers gather your belongings and start boarding, please!”
“[Twirling Block],” Alisanne said, spinning her club once more and trying her new idea. It didn’t work, and her new looser grip caused her weapon to fly out of her hand. It sailed through the air and landed on the ground a few feet away.
Spitting on the ground, Alisanne scooped up her club, wiped the dirt of its handle and hurried back to the carriage. She’d have to keep working on that.
After a brief bit of freedom, the lumpy carriage seat felt even more uncomfortable than she’d thought before, but Alisanne didn’t care. She had a problem that she could focus on now, and spent the rest of the day’s travel thinking about what she could do to get her weapon to finish its spin properly.
This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.
The second day’s travel was much like the first, except for the fact that the empty fields and rolling hills were eventually replaced by a strange forest filled with bent and twisted trees that looked like monsters with their arms outstretched above their heads. According to their [Carriage Driver], Old Narluc was at the heart of this forest, which had no name beyond ‘The Wood’.
Nothing ominous about that!
During their breaks, Alisanne stayed extremely close to the carriage and the other adventurers, practicing [Twirling Block] over and over. She was making some progress. Possibly. It was hard to be sure, all things considered, but she’d managed a few wobbly spins that gave her hope she was on the right track, though she was nowhere near being able to try and repeat the motion multiple times to ensure the skill triggered. She hoped that she’d be able to get it down properly once she had unfettered time to practice in Old Narluc.
On the final break before they reached the city, the [Carriage Driver] made his way from adventurer to adventurer and handed them all a small yellow candy-looking thing.
“This is a beedlebloom nostrum. It bolsters your mental fortitude. Take it when I hit the carriage top,” he explained to Alisanne. Seeing her bemused expression, he continued, “Old Narluc is different than most cities, and some people don’t initially react well to its, uh, ambiance.”
“Ambience? What does that mean?” Alisanne asked.
“You’ll see. Or rather hear. Or maybe even feel. Doesn’t matter. What’s important to remember is that it’ll pass in a day or two at the most, and that you’ll be fine if you take the nostrum when I tell you. Got it?”
Alisanne nodded. Yet another totally unconcerning development, yes indeed! She got back into the carriage, clutching the nostrum like it was a beloved pet and looked around. Judging by the worried expressions on the faces of her peers, she wasn’t the only one unsettled by the [Carriage Driver]’s warning. Heck, a heavily muscled kitrekin who carried a pair of gleaming bronze scimitars on his hips was visibly shaking and a blue-scaled salamander with a golden necklace looked like she was on the verge of tears.
“Heck of a place to have a dungeon circuit stop,” Alisanne muttered, pressing her face against the window as the carriage started rolling again. Two of the nearest trees seemed to turn toward her, the grain of their bark looking entirely too much like gruesome faces for Alisanne’s satisfaction.
“Heck of a place indeed.”
Just before sunset on the second day of travel, the forest finally started to thin. The trees were now consistently otherworldly shades of purple and green, and they were thin and spindly. No matter where she looked, Alisanne saw no animals but crows with purple streaks in their wings, which all watched the carriage with unblinking red eyes.
She wasn’t sure when it started, but at some point Alisanne became aware of two distinctly new sensations. The first felt like she was standing under a leaky downspout or being tapped on the shoulder repeatedly, and it ran from her shoulder blades to the top of her skull. The second was a quiet, high-pitched buzzing, like the sound of a mosquito buzzing near her ear.
Just before they started to get genuinely uncomfortable, the [Carriage Driver] knocked on the roof three times and Alisanne wasted no time in swallowing the beedlebloom nostrum. It mostly tasted like mint, but there were a few other hints of flavor there too that Alisanne didn’t mind. It worked quickly, and within a few minutes her symptoms had mostly subsided, though she could still hear the buzz in the air if she tried hard enough.
When Old Narluc finally came into view, Alisanne was relieved. Weird as the city undoubtedly would be, she was ready to be out of the carriage. After the first night of travel she’d resolved to buy some additional books to read and splurge for a more expensive – and hopefully spacious – seat to make her future trips more comfortable.
The city was much smaller than Oar’s Crest, and the biggest feature was a spiraling tower of gray-blue stone that rose above the city’s black walls. When they got closer, Alisanne saw that it was a clock tower and that a snarling winged elkin statue with clawed hands stood in the center, pointing at the time with two of its six arms. She half-expected it to start pulsing while she looked at it, like it was a great stone heart beating to keep some sort of unfathomable monster alive, but it didn’t and Alisanne sighed with relief.
She disembarked, thanked the [Carriage Driver] for the trip and the nostrum, grabbed her bags, and headed into the city. A bevy of smells that were as interesting as they were unusual greeted her nose, inviting her to go wander and explore. What sort of interesting people were out there waiting to meet her? What sort of hidden adventure lurked in the spiral streets beyond the station?
Alisanne was curious and more than a little tempted; Alrick would have gone and explored a bit. He would have wandered the markets and drank at a few bars, talked to the richest and poorest looking person he could find, and probably have gotten into at least three fights. That was always how Alrick’s adventures went. Lots of talking and lots of fighting…just the way Alisanne liked them.
Unfortunately, Alisanne’s appetite for a similar experience was surprisingly nonexistent. She suspected the temptation – which seemed to emanate from every building and the ground beneath her feet – was yet another part of the city’s “ambiance” and willed herself to ignore it. Her first priorities were to secure lodging for the next few days and then make her way to the adventurer’s guild to check in as a circuit competitor and get further instructions. After that she could maybe – maybe - do a bit of wandering and see what Old Narluc had to offer.
Making her way down the curved street, Alisanne kept an eye out for an inn. There didn’t seem to be much in the way of signage in Old Narluc: buildings might have been color coordinated according to some rules she didn’t understand, but there was nothing she recognized as an inn or anything similar.
The citizens of Old Narluc were almost entirely elkins wearing robes with eyes the color of milk. They sat on rich red and black blankets, passing small golden trinkets from one hand to the other and muttering into the wind. A few sold dried herbs and mushrooms – Gawain’s beard, there were so many mushrooms! – or jars filled with strange floating things that Alisanne didn’t recognize.
The streets were clean – which was quite nice, Alisanne had to admit – and while there wasn’t much in the way of plants anywhere to be seen, there were plenty of statues and other decorations throughout the city. Most were similar to the one atop the clock tower, but there were also a bevy of snakes, eyeball creatures, shamblers, and cats too.
Most strange were the regularly spaced rows of leather bound books along the street, contained neatly in small pentagonal lockboxes that were gilded with silver and polished gemstones. Handpainted wooden signs above them all said, “An invitation to the Mysteries, one secret.”
She didn’t see a coin slot of any kind, but each box also had a small brass sculpted ear on the very top. Perhaps one simply had to whisper a secret to get the box to open?
Alisanne paused and thought for a moment. She had plenty of secrets – what seventeen year old girl didn’t? – and the sign made no distinction of how valuable a given secret needed to be. Would telling the box that she’d cheated to win a scavenger hunt in elementary school count?
Eventually she decided that she didn’t want to find out; she didn’t know what Mysteries they were talking about – or why they were deserving of the capital letter – and that was okay.
Alrick would have been disappointed in her, but he was a fictional character so Alisanne didn’t put much stock in his opinion.
A group of salamanders walking in a line with their heads bowed passed her, and Alisanne stopped to get a better look. They were scrawnier than the salamanders of Oar’s Crest, and while they were all different colors their scales were faded to a near-identical shade of gray and covered with strange, painted symbols. Much like the elkins, their eyes were starkly white.
In what must have passed for a park or a town square of sorts stood a towering elkin with red fur and a far more ornate robe than the others she’d seen. He carried a large sign that said, Seek new truths! Gawain slumbers near distant shores, but will soon awaken in rage. A new Patch is upon us!
“You were right, Vera,” Alisanne muttered, relieved that the strange elkin hadn’t made eye contact with her as she’d passed. “I really don’t want to spend any more time here than I need to. Here’s to hoping I can do my run sooner rather than later.”
awful. In addition my entire family being sick with a nasty cold, there's also been a snowstorm/icy conditions that has everyone losing their minds. That's pretty normal for the Seattle area whenever there's any snow, but what's made it worse is that this is the week that my septic tank decided to have major issues, and I've been failing to get someone to come out to emergency pump it since Tuesday. Hopefully by the time this chapter is posted that'll be taken care of, but it's been a rough few days at the Rowan house.