"Your task will be to help Hailstone Priest with his project." Moonlight Guardian had sent word to meet her here at the shrine of the God of Clear Skies the following day. I had arrived to find her discussing something with Hailstone Priest. My guess was I was about to find out what.
Fall had set in and there was a chill in the air. The days had grown shorter and the Sun wouldn't reach its zenith again until next year. This gave the forest just a subtle change in vista. The trees themselves were not deciduous—I surmised due to the luminous crystals—so you wouldn't get to enjoy the leaves changing color, and would have to content yourself on the standard glowing blue, purple, and red foliage.
"I am so grateful for your assistance," Hailstone Priest said with more glee than usual. "I know it is for your training, but I've wanted to do this project for a while now, and I feared I would never be able to undertake it.”
"Is it okay if I ask what exactly I will be helping you with?" After the first tier of training Moonlight Guardian had put me through, I couldn't help but be a little on edge.
"Do you see these shrines, Indigo?" He directed my attention to the two shrines.
I direct my gaze to one and then the other. "Yes..."
He seemed to be expecting more of a response because he followed up with, "Do you notice anything about them?"
Well now that he pointed it out, one did look like it had been blown off its base multiple times and—though I hate to say—poorly repaired, and the other looked like the roof had caved in and part of the support was missing. "Well, they seem to be in a... state of disrepair."
"You don't have to mince words, they are well past their prime." He sighed. "Any time there is a storm, it's not a question of if they will need to be repaired, but how much." I see. So the start of disrepair was due to a poor return on investment. Why do more than the minimum repairs if they would be destroyed in the next storm? "I've long wanted to replace them with stone structures that will stand the test of time." Stone does tend to last a long time. "But alas, I don't have time to procure the materials myself, and it's not a task I can just ask others to shoulder for me." Yet here you are, asking regardless. “That's why I was grateful when Moonlight Guardian offered your assistance to finally undertake this project." How noble of her.
"So you need me to bring you stones then?" It was a fair assumption.
"Yes, I would most appreciate it."
"Can you give specifics?"
"I am looking for stones about this size." He gestured with his hands to give the approximate dimensions of the stones he was looking for, about 33cm x 15cm x 20cm. "I will need about 200 of them."
"Would you know where I could find rocks of this kind? And where do I need to bring them?"
"Well, you need to bring them here of course." He pointed to the platform—I guess that should have been obvious. "As for where you can find them, I would guess anywhere, but they are certainly abundant around the river." So from the river to the highest platform in the Two-Trees... That is no small distance.
"That is your task Indigo," Moonlight Guardian spoke after letting Hailstone Priest say his piece. "Once you have delivered 200 stones of the specified type to this platform, we will advance in your training."
I stared at her waiting for the other shoe to drop. Would I have to do it under a time limit again? While wearing a blindfold? Maybe she would only let me sleep for three hours a night. However, after no further comment was given, I asked, "Is there some... manner you want me to transport them?"
"No, the method of transport is up to you, so long it is you who does the transporting."
"Is there a time limit?"
"No, there is no time limit or special stipulations, you need not worry." She picked up that I still found her intentions suspect. "Truly Indigo, I am not trying to trick you this time. This is strictly a conditioning exercise."
Well, this species doesn't lie—pretty sure that gets beat out of you early on if you are inclined to do so—see the Gale incident—and I didn't see Moonlight Guardian as a malicious actor, so I decided I could take her at her word.
So I just needed to move 200 stones of the prescribed size to this platform. No time limit, no special stipulations. Okay, this seemed doable.
This was totally not doable! Appearly, I was so taken in by how straightforward this task was that I forgot that I was only 6 years old, and a member of a small species. My best guess was I couldn't weigh much more than 30 pounds soaking wet. Unfortunately, I was reminded of this when I collected my first stone.
Once I dislodged it from the dirt, which wasn't so hard with fox magic, I realized these stones had to be at least twice what I weighed, that is to say, around 60 lbs! Without fox magic, moving these stones would have been just the fever dream of a madman.
Lifting them with fox magic was doable—I had built it up after all—but it still required more than twice the effort flying required, and moving with them was slow going. Also, if I relied only on fox magic to move them, I would find myself quickly depleted, so I had to carry them the old-fashioned way with a levitation assist. It was immediately apparent to me that this would take a long time...
I managed to get that rock up to the third platform before I called it quits for the first day; I was exhausted and it was dinner time. My thinking was if I could break transporting a rock into multiple days, then I could do it.
Returning home on that first day, I trudged through the front door, much as I imagined a quarryman might after a hard day's work.
"Good timing, Indigo," mother sounded delighted. "You are just in time for dinner." I continued to drag myself to the dining circle without missing a beat and dropped down into my designated spot. Dusk had grown a lot over the last year and was now at the age where she was getting into everything. She was especially fond of grabbing people's tails and putting them into her mouth, which she had proceeded to do to mine. Normally I would pull my tail away, but today I couldn't be bothered.
"Dusk! Don't suck on your brother's tail! It's rude." Mother chided as she often did of her daughter, though I doubt my sister understood the concept of rudeness. That alone wasn't enough to cause her to relinquish, so she followed up with some banal threat. Something like, "I won't pay attention to you if you don't listen." This was actually quite effective.
Mother placed the seared leg of some animal in the center of the area. She had seasoned it well and it had a rich savory smell. Custom dictated for this kind of meal, you would just tear off a piece and eat it. Thanks to fox magic, this wasn't as messy as you might think... unless you were an almost two-year-old kite.
Enough of sister's teeth had come in that she could eat right along with us, given that someone broke the food into bite-size pieces. Of course, she liked to assert her independence and feed herself, and being unable to use fox magic or easily find her mouth, she made quite a mess. Not that this bothered me much today, as I ate my food in apathetic silence.
Dry-Grass Bonecrafter, the social butterfly she was, couldn't let that stand. "So how did your apprenticeship go today?"
"I moved rocks. Well, one rock anyway." I continued to chew my food. It wasn't that I was in a bad mood, I just didn't have the energy.
"Just moving rocks?" Unsurprisingly, she found this a strange practice.
"Yeap."
"Just back and forth?"
"No, from the river to the shrine of the God of Clear Skies."
"That's an awfully long way..."
"Tell me about it," I interrupted.
"Is there a reason it has to be the shrine?"
"Hailstone Priest is building new shrines and needs building materials."
"Oh yes! Those shrines have been in bad shape for a while. I'm glad you are helping him out!"
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"It was just so Moonlight Guardian could train me."
"Still, you are making the village a better place. I'm proud of you Indigo!" I blushed a little. Mother always had a way of making you feel good about yourself. Guess that is the talent of outgoing people.
"Well, I guess if you can help improve the village as a byproduct of training, that is a good thing."
"Of course! What do..." We continued to talk throughout dinner. She was talented at getting people to open up. Afterward, I went to bed, feeling spiritually rejuvenated after our conversation. The road ahead might be hard, but hard times make strong men, and the world would be better off for it.
I got up early the following morning feeling refreshed and ready to take on the day. And I was eager to start the day by finishing what I had started yesterday and delivering that first stone to the shine.
...Where is it!? Had I misplaced it? No, I was certain I had left it right here! Maybe somebody moved it? I began scouring the platform. Was it here? No. Maybe over there?
At some point, Moonlight Guardian had come into frame. "What are you doing Indigo?"
"Have you seen a stone around here?"
"You can't just leave rock lying on the platform," she said casually.
I stiffly turned my neck to face her. "WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY ROCK!?"
"I kicked it off the edge," she said calmly. Tears welled up under my mask, all that hard work wasted! "Just ensure you get them in one go, so you don't leave them on the platform."
"But you said there were no stipulations!" She HAD tricked me!
"There aren't, but it is unwise to leave things unattended."
So it was like that, was it?
"The world will not always be so accommodating, don't expect it to be." I'm sure there was a lesson there, but I was far too miffed to pay any heed.
I would go down to the area on the forest floor beneath the spot where I had left the stone, and with some searching would find it. This would save me the long journey to the river at least.
Once again, with considerable effort, I got the stone to the third platform. That just left... 500 meters worth of stairs, ugh. It would take the rest of the day, but I got it there.
That's one...
Despite the modesty of the achievement, Hailstone Priest still lavished me with praise. He seemed genuine in his accolades, and even if he wasn't, it was nice to be appreciated.
I arrived home late, and Mother had left some dinner for me since they had already finished. It had green fruit in it, but I was so hungry after having expended so much energy that I didn't even notice until after I had finished and belched out its residual taste... disgusting.
Over the next several days I would laboriously move one stone a day to the shrine. But on that third day...
What the hell am I doing!? At this rate, it will take 200 days to complete this task! And that's assuming obstacles don't arise and they certainly will. I am an engineer dammit! I need to work smarter, not harder!
Thinking about it, once Moonlight Guardian said there were no stipulations, the fact that I hadn't tried to engineer a solution on the spot was a personal failure. Still, though the blinders had been lifted, I needed a plan.
What were the issues? The first was transporting the stones from the river to the tree. Not only was carrying a stone difficult in its own right but I was limited to just one. A lot of time was lost just on return trips to the river.
The second issue was getting the rocks up to the platform. Moving something laterally was significantly easier than increasing its elevation. So what could I do to address these issues?
"You want my help to build something to help you with a task?" I had asked Treetop Carver for a favor since he still owed me from that bed bug incident.
"Yes, I can tell you how to build it, but I'm not good at working with wood."
"And what do you need to build?"
"You know that thing the merchant uses to transport his stuff around?"
He thought for a moment. "Oh yeah, I know what you are talking about! Never built anything like that though."
"That's okay, together we can construct it." He was game and even seemed excited to build something new. Also, I think there hasn't been much work for him lately.
With our combined effort, with me providing the design and Treetop Carver actually doing most of the construction—though I was able to help out with the simple stuff, and actually learned a lot in the process—the project was finished in short order.
The end product was a two-wheeled cart with a wooden axle. It would have been nice to have some iron to work with, but it was more than enough; we wouldn't be transporting crazy amounts of cargo. We used fat from the game that the Hunters had recently killed to grease the axle and it worked better than I could have hoped. A little behind the curve, but the Two Trees had developed the wheel!
The next issue was getting the stone up to the shrine. I didn't think there was much hope of directly getting them to the shrine, but the third platform was doable. How, you ask?
With a winch, of course! I had long since thought the village could benefit from such a device. But now it would be personally beneficial and seemed like the perfect time to have one installed.
This project involved more work on both the engineering and building fronts, requiring a greater diversity and a greater quantity of materials. I was able to acquire a length of rope from the weavers—yes, they make that too—but the item of the greatest difficulty to procure was something that could be used as a spring for the ratchet. Luckily, I found that we could use some of the more supple lumber for this purpose.
My supervision of the construction of key parts was essential, as they didn't allow much room for creative license and Treetop Carver didn't have much in the way of a scientific education, nobody for that matter. Thinking about it, the state of even the most basic of mathematical understanding was downright shameful. If I were ever to become Elder—or some other position with influence—I would need to insist that we at least teach proper addition and subtraction... and multiplication; division; exponents; derivatives... integrals? Maybe I was getting ahead of myself.
Anyways, we successfully built the winch and it was securely mounted on the third platform. Treetop Carver was quite pleased with the final product as it was by far the most complex thing he had ever built, though I don't think he appreciated its practical value. For instance, I could now carry not just one, but many rocks up to the third platform in a tiny fraction of the time it would have taken to move a single stone.
All said, both the wagon and the winch took us about a week to complete, which was better than I had hoped and wouldn't have been possible without the use of fox magic. This especially made cutting much faster. I couldn't use cut magic as the hardness of the wood and the precision required were incompatible. But it made using woodworking tools much easier. As you can imagine, Treetop Carver was rather adept at using them this way.
With the construction of these two tools, my job got considerably easier, but that still left the most difficult part, the 500-meter ascent. That would still need to be tackled in the old-fashioned way. Sigh.
Using these new systems, I could now move 10 rocks at a time from the river. This limit wasn't due to the cart, but because it was hard to move a heavy cart over uneven terrain. Still, ten was a good number. Hoisting them to the third platform was much easier—I had ensured I gave myself a considerable mechanical advantage. I could carry the whole payload up in one go. I actually felt pretty arrogant about how easy this would be until I remembered I still needed to deliver them to the shrine. Unfortunately, there weren't any cheat codes for that.
Still, I realized that if I put several stones in a bag, say three, I could drag the bag up the stairs and deliver multiple stones the same day. As you can imagine, this was considerably harder than moving just one stone, but I could make it to the top before the end of the day. Hailstone Priest was glad to see me and said he was worried when I had suddenly stopped making deliveries for the last week. Whether that was because he was worried for me or that he might not get those stones after all, remained to be seen.
Each night, I drop the winch basket containing any remaining stones back down to the ground to ensure Moonlight Guardian didn't cause any problems. I was also worried that she might try to dislodge the winch even though it was firmly mounted into the third platform, that is why we made sure to clear it with the Elder right at the start.
And so I started moving three stones a day to the shrine, by making one trip a day. However, as time progressed, I got to two a day and eventually three. Even though I had gone to some lengths to make my job easier, I had channeled that saved effort into moving more rocks. So it looked like Moonlight Guardian's conditioning exercise was still doing its job despite my best efforts.
On a side note, I noticed a couple times when Hailstone Priest's praise was a bit more muted. If not for the fact that I had come to expect his over-the-top gratitude, I probably wouldn't have noticed that Lilac Governess had stopped by on these occasions. Alone! How unusual. They were using the Whisper, but that didn't stop me from forming my suspicions. Hailstone Priest, you dirty dog... fox... cat... err whatever.
There was another issue, as time went on, I was running out of rocks. Sure, there were plenty of them. There were rocks everywhere, but rocks of the prescribed size? Well, I found that I had to go further and further downriver to uncover them. Eventually, the distance I had to travel from the tree had more than doubled. And it wasn't so much the trip to the river that was problematic as much as the return trip. It still took considerable effort to move a cart full of rock, and I would like to minimize this distance.
The thing was, there were plenty of large boulders, couldn't I just cut them into smaller pieces and use those instead? As the distance I traveled increased, the more appealing this option. Eventually, I would ask the Masons to borrow some tools and get to splitting rocks.
This was harder than I anticipated, and it took some practice to get a stone of the appropriate size to split off. Still, this was different from what I had been doing, and it let other parts of my body recover. I would often find that I spent an entire day just splitting off stones.
Another thing I started doing at this time was keeping a small contingent of stones at the bottom of the winch. It was impossible to move the cart through inclement weather, and if I didn't have any rocks at the ready, it was a day wasted. For whatever reason, once I had a task set before me, I couldn't stand to leave it incomplete. I could still climb to the shrine in such weather, though admittedly, it was unpleasant.
It was my displeasure with rain whipping in my face that led me to develop a lesser kind of force field or barrier magic. By extrapolating the principles of movement fields I had learned from cut magic, I could create a field that would repeal the rain.
Now you might be thinking, "Problem solved." Well not quite, there were several problems. First, was the way these movement fields worked, by creating, well, movement. This included the air, so it would create airflow, and the harder it rained, the stronger the movement field that would be required and the stronger the flow of air. What's the problem you ask? Well, although I could keep the rain from whipping me in the face, I was still soaking wet, and a strong breeze was chilling and threatened hypothermia if I was reckless.
The second issue was that this drained my PPUs (Psionic Power Units). By itself, this wouldn't be a problem, but I would also be dragging a heavy bag of stones up a flight of stairs, expending no small amount of effort. Between the two, one would suffer, and that is saying nothing of the mental toll of maintaining two distinct applications of fox magic.
In the end, I usually just compromised on the psychic umbrella and just rendered a simple redirection of the rain to minimize it lashing me in the face. Took the sting off at least.
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