Broken Lands

Sophia blinked as she followed Rensyn through a door marked FINDS EVALUATION. It was close to what she thought of as the “shop area” but it wasn’t in any of the shops; instead, it was a short ways down a corridor in the other direction, closer to the armory than the magic item shop or the apothecary.

Once her eyes adjusted to the bright light, Sophia saw that the far wall was covered in books, while the wall to the left held an odd collection of magical paraphernalia. The wall to the right was mostly empty shelves; there were a couple of wooden boxes but that was all.

The middle of the room held a table, but even with the table, there was plenty of room to move around. A somewhat familiar face seemed to be taking advantage of the table for a break, based on the matched orange teacup and bowl. Sophia tried to remember his name; she could remember that he was the man from the apothecary shop, but his name escaped her. She’d met too many people in quick succession. It was something like elven? No, that couldn’t be right.

“Halven! How did you get stuck watching the evaluation room again?” Rensyn greeted the apothecary loudly.

Well, maybe she was right after all. Halven was sort of like elven. She needed to fix his name in her memory; misusing it would be rude.

Halven chuckled. “You know Johan hates spending time here. I think he just gets bored, but what do I know?” Halven shrugged. “I appreciate good reading material and I appreciate a first look at surprises I might want to buy even more. So what are you bringing me?”

“A shiny rock,” Rensyn said with a grin, then waved Sophia forward. “I’m pretty sure I forgot to show you this place on the tour. This is where you bring stuff you find that you think might be valuable or dangerous to get examined. If no one’s here, check at any of the stores, including the armory; they’ll know who’s supposed to be watching the room.”

“We try to have someone here every afternoon,” Halven added. “Once in a while there’s a line but that’s really rare. So. Shiny rock?”

He sounded eager and his eyes started to glow slightly. He must be more bored than he was letting on. Sophia shook her head with a small grin and pulled the silk bag out of her pack, then removed the rock from the bag.

“I can already tell you that that bag would go for a pretty penny,” Halven said, his eyes on the silk bag. “Magical insulation of any sort does, when you find it. I can barely even tell the bag’s insulated; I doubt I’d have noticed without seeing you pull that magic rock out. Where did you get it?”

“Uh,” Sophia temporized. She hadn’t bought the bags herself, but she didn’t think there was anything too unusual about them. If this was unusual and valuable here, what else did they not have? “They came with me from my homeland, I don’t know where to get more here.”

Halven shook his head. “Too bad. If you decide you don’t need it, talk to Johan; he’s more likely to need something like that than I am.”

With that, he turned his attention to the geode. He examined it from all sides, then set it down with the open face down on the table. After a moment of staring at it, he got a set of lenses from the shelves to the left and used them to examine the round part of the rock. “I thought so.”

“Mmm?” Sophia made an inquisitive noise.

Halven nodded sharply, then flipped the rock over so that he could see its crystalline interior. He kept nodding as he examine it with one lens after another. “This is a natural magic source. This one’s almost exhausted; I can’t tell if that happened before or after it was broken open. That makes it a lot less valuable; it’s hard to make anything from with such a low concentration of magic. Are you looking to sell it?”

“I guess?” Sophia glanced around the group; she certainly didn’t have any use for a slightly magical geode and it didn’t look like anyone else did either. “Do you know why it would be in a storage room at the West Conservatory?”

“That’s where you found it?” Halven frowned at the geode, then looked up at Rensyn. “Should I be expecting a major mission soon? There’s only one reason I can think of that you’d be sending people there.”

Rensyn nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

Halven blew out a breath, then shook his head. “Suppose I should be glad I’m a Professional. Still, that explains why it’s so weak; it was probably broken open before the corpsevines showed up. As for why it’s there, well,” he tilted a hand over like he was revealing a secret in his hand, “magical plants need magic. Natural magic works the best.”

Halven grinned at Sophia. She could tell that he liked explaining things; that was probably part of why he was happy to take the “finds examination” duty that Johan apparently didn’t like. “Conservatories plant stones like this, generally unbroken, in parts of the greenhouse where they want to encourage specific magical plants. I can’t tell what element this was attuned to; from the colors, it was probably water or lightning, but the colors aren’t always definitive. It would have slowly leaked that magic and enabled them to grow plants that needed that environment. Once it was broken it couldn’t be used because it would leak magic too quickly; it was probably set aside until the magic was low enough to plant shards of the crystal instead. These days, that’s about all it’s good for, to accelerate the growth of plants that just need a little magic but no specific environment.”

Sophia nodded. Knowing that it was simply a normal tool of the West Conservatory eased her concerns about what they were going to find, but she had to wonder if the geodes might not have something to do with the corpsevines. They hadn’t spread out of the Conservatory building, at least according to Lillah; was it possible they needed the extra mana of geodes like that? If they did, was it possible the first corpsevine arrived in Casterville with one of the geodes? “Where do they come from? Do you dig them up, or…?”

“I’m pretty sure they all come on trade caravans,” Halven said with a careless shrug. “I don’t know what the actual origin is; I don’t think I’ve ever asked. Are you interested in selling this one?”

Sophia wasn’t sure the origin really mattered, now that she knew they weren’t local. It raised the chance that the corpsevine came in with a geode, but if it had did that mean that somewhere else was worse off or were the growing conditions better here? Sophia didn’t even know where to begin.

No, that wasn’t true. She could begin by selling this geode and getting some cash to split with her group. Keeping it wouldn’t help her look into where the corpsevine came from. “Yeah, I think we are. What are you offering?”

The tavern was relatively quiet, since it was between mealtimes, but they weren’t the only people in the room. The food was actually pretty good, a well-spiced hearty stew with some sort of a thick flatbread, but it was the only option. You apparently had to eat when others did to get a choice.

Well, they did still offer a choice of beverage. Sophia and Dav were having lemonade; neither of them wanted anything alcoholic and the only other nonalcoholic option available was milk. Today seemed like a lemonade day more than a milk day.

Sophia was contemplating seconds when Rensyn joined the group at their table. She’d just decided that she probably shouldn’t when he pulled out a chair and dropped into it.

It had only been about an hour since he left them at the Finds Evaluation room, but Rensyn looked like he’d been running around for that entire time and really needed a break. He closed his eyes for a moment when he sat, then shook himself and leaned forward. “We need to talk about leveling. All five of you are Level One, right?”

Sophia nodded. He already knew that.

“Right, so, that should be fine for a corpsevine or two as long as you stick together. Don’t let anyone go off alone; make sure you always know where everyone in your group is. Corpsevines are essentially ambush predators and we’ll be heading into their territory. There are several different types; watch out for anything fully covered in vines. They’re spellcasters.” Rensyn paused and glanced around. “That is, if you’re going to participate in the extermination?”

Sophia was suddenly far more interested in the extermination. Spellcasters meant more spells for Cliff to collect. He hadn’t picked up anything from the corpsevine cutting they killed, other than confirmation that it was actually called a Fresh Corpsevine Cutting when it was added to his collection. “I’m planning to.”

Her agreement was echoed around the table. Oddly enough, Dav was the last one to chime in, and his response was the positive reaction of the others. “Is it worth any Wisps? We didn’t get anything from the one we killed earlier.”

Rensyn chuckled. “Not from the kill, no, but have you checked since you talked to me?”

Sophia hadn’t. She hadn’t seen any reason to; why would telling people about what they’d done be worth more than doing it? That didn’t make any sense.

She checked her Status anyway. It flicked open just long enough for her to see her Wisps. There were 272. That meant she’d gained 250 since the last time she checked it. “That’s more Wisps than the flame beavers!”

Rensyn nodded. “That’s why people say the Guide doesn’t assign Wisps in a way that makes sense. It’s not based on what you do or on how hard it is, at least not completely. The impact to the world matters, and there have to be some factors we don’t know about as well. This was just a reconnaissance mission, but Oh, that reminds me; did I mention that you two are getting a reward from the Registry for your efforts to rescue that town? It won’t be awarded until the evaluation of the village is complete in a couple of weeks, and you’ll get more from the extermination mission, but it’s something.”

That was a surprise. Sophia hadn’t expected anything; that wasn’t why she helped. That was just what you did in an emergency.

“Thanks.” Dav didn’t sound as puzzled as Sophia felt; instead, he sounded grateful. “We appreciate it.”

Rensyn gave a single-handed wave, as if he were pushing the gratefulness past himself. “It’s Registry policy to give rewards for things we’d have paid for if they’re taken care of before we know about them, as long as we can confirm it. It makes it more likely the problems are dealt with while they’re small. That’s not what we need to talk about, we need to talk about the Wisps you received for searching for corpsevines. Normally, I’d say you should spend them on completing your kit and figuring out which of your possible directions you want to go, since it’s always best to do that at the lowest Level possible. Unfortunately, there’s no safe place in a war zone for a Level One. A second Level gives you a better chance to react if something goes wrong, like a corpsevine’s vine dropping on you from above.”

Somehow, Sophia didn’t think that example came out of nowhere. It sounded like it came from experience.

Rensyn didn’t slow down. “I don’t recommend going all the way to Level Three; that’s too much of a cost on your future, and Level Two should be enough if you’re careful. I do think you should consider Level Two. Do all of you meet the standard recommendations for Level advancement?”