Victor of Tucson

“I’m sorry I said that,” Thayla said after the rush of Energy faded. “I know you risked yourself to get that thing off my neck, but I don’t want to get killed because I showed you my secret.”

“You think Lam would kill you for having that axe?”

“Hah, no, not Lam. She’s the one who gave me the storage ring I have hung around my neck. This stuff makes me a big target, though, and I’m not looking to get jumped if you know what I mean.” She gave Victor a funny look, and he realized she was trying to make a joke.

“Alright, alright. Yes, I know exactly what you mean. I promise I won’t mention it. How’d this thing get you around the neck like that, anyway?” Victor looked at the red, blistered marks above Thayla’s collar.

“I was looking through that trapdoor, and I called for you, then that damn vine or tentacle thing dropped from the ceiling and grabbed my neck.” She pointed to a wooden square in the stone flooring, and Victor realized it was the trapdoor she was referring to.

“Oh shit! So you did find something? Let’s check it out!”

“Alright, but use your light orb,” she pointed to the Globe of Insight still hovering in the air where Victor had “thrown” it. He looked at it and tried to send out his will to make it move toward the trapdoor, but it felt like trying to grab a globe of water with his fingers; he could feel it, but it kept slipping from his grasp.

“Promise not to laugh?” he asked Thayla.

“Sure, why?”

“Hah, get closer to it. When you’re learning to manipulate Energy constructs, it helps to gesture with your hand; my mother told me that people are used to moving things with their hands, so we subconsciously visualize our will as a projection of our touch.”

“Really?” Victor walked over to the orb and held out his hand, “pushing” it toward the trapdoor. The orb floated effortlessly ahead of his hand and stopped when he pulled it back. “Holy shit, that was easy. Your mom’s a genius!”

“Well, she was pretty smart and a great teacher. I miss her all the time,” Thayla said, shrugging and moving to lean over the trapdoor. “Alright, get your baton ready. I’m going to open this thing.” She pushed her hands through a large gap between the rotting timbers and yanked the trapdoor up. It moved easily, probably because she’d already forced it earlier, and Victor’s light shone down onto more gray stones and the rotten remains of an ancient ladder. “Hmm, lots of cobwebs and some mold, but I don’t see anything dangerous,” Thayla said quietly, poking her head into the hole. “Push your light down there.”

“Alright,” Victor, using his hand to guide it, lowered his floating orb and pushed it down into the space beneath the floor. Thayla still had her head hanging through the opening, and when his light moved past it, she took in a deep breath.

“We’re going to win for sure!”

“What? What is it?” Victor knelt to try to poke his head through the opening.

“Crates! Lots of crates! They’re preserved, too. Whoever stored this stuff cared enough to enchant them!” She grabbed the hole's edge, giving Victor a bit of a shove to make room, and then she dropped down. “Nothing here but some old dead spiders! Come down,” she called up. Victor took one more look around the room, focusing on the hunched corpse of the gray thing and, seeing nothing to worry about, dropped down.

The room below was a low ceilinged stone galley about ten feet wide by fifty long, and both walls along its length were stacked with wooden crates, each about two feet square. Thayla was prying open one of the crates with an iron prybar that she’d, presumably, pulled out of her storage ring. Victor went over to help. The wooden crate was made of good, solid wood, and the nails holding the top down weren’t the least bit rusty. “Someone really enchanted these so they wouldn’t decay? Would that be expensive?”

“For me or you, yeah. For some rich noble, not at all.” She grunted and gave the prybar another heave, and Victor pulled the wooden lid. With a screech, the nails pulled free, and the contents were exposed—stacks of dull red metal ingots. “Woah,” Thayla said, putting her prybar away and lifting out one of the ingots.

“What kind of metal is that?” Victor asked, also picking one up. It was heavy, maybe heavier than steel, but he wasn’t sure. The red color was interesting, though, and it had a weird, shifting sheen in the light of his orb.

“I don’t know. It’s not amber ore, steel, or any other metal I’ve seen. Maybe it’s valuable. Forget that; it’s definitely valuable. I just don’t know how valuable.”

“Alright, let’s take one back to the meeting spot, eh?”

“Yep, Captain Lam will know what it is, I’m sure.” Thayla set the lid down and then walked up and down the row of crates, counting them. “Twenty-four ingots in a crate and a hundred and twenty crates. Ancestors! If these are very valuable at all, Captain is going to love us.” Victor couldn’t help smiling; he’d almost died a few minutes ago, and now he was discovering a hidden hoard of possibly magical metal—the huge, sudden swings in his fortune couldn’t be good for his mental state, but he felt good, anyway. Was it the Energy he’d gotten from the kill? Was he still buzzing from it?

They climbed out of the storage cellar and then made their way out of the ruined building and back to the meeting point. He and Thayla were the first to arrive. Then Lam came swooping out of a dark tunnel halfway up the wall on the far side of the cavern. Her wings trailed glittering motes as she descended to land in front of them. She was clearing her throat to speak when Heng came jogging out from behind a building, Fenlale a short way behind with a rotten wooden trunk cradled in his arms. “We got something good, I think, Captain!” Heng hollered as they strode forward.

“What about you two?” Captain Lam asked while they waited for the two men to close the distance. Thayla held out the ingot, and Captain Lam took it, weighing it thoughtfully in one hand while she produced a leatherbound text with her other. Heng and Fenlale arrived while she was studying the ingot, and Fenlale let down his burden with a heavy clatter of wood and metal.

“What’s in the chest?” Thayla asked.

“Weapons, and most of ‘em not even rusted. Artificed, I’d wager.”

“Huh, nice. Might have won, too, but I think we’ve got you beat.” Thayla said, a sly smile stretching her lips.

“Hmm, this is an alloy. See how the light makes those rainbow swirls in the metal?” Victor leaned close, looking where she pointed. “And it’s hard; I can’t scrape it with my steel dagger. I’d say this is a mixture of amber ore and bronze. According to my book, amber ore, tin, and copper require less heat to combine than steel and amber ore, but they still produce a tough alloy. It’s valuable for sure, but let me take a look at these weapons before I determine who won.” Victor looked at Thayla, and she held a finger to her lips and winked.

Captain Lam lifted the lid off the old wooden box and whistled appreciatively. The box was full of knives and shortswords. The knives ranged in size from small four-inch blades to much longer dagger-like weapons. There were only four shortswords, but they all gleamed in the light of the glow stones, their matching blades dangerous-looking even to Victor’s untrained eye. “Yep, very nice blades—artificed for sure. Sorry, Thayla and Victor, but I think Heng and Fenlale win!”

“Oh, but you haven’t seen all that we found,” Thayla said, grinning at Heng, who’d just started to whoop and raise a fist in the air.

“You have something else?”

“Well, not exactly; we have something more—over a hundred crates of those ingots.” Thayla nodded to the ingot still in Lam’s fist.

“What?” Lam stood up, and her eyes widened. “Crates?”

“Yep and each crate has twenty-four ingots,” Victor added, holding out a fist for Thayla to bump. She gave him a funny look, but then she laughed and gave his knuckles a good punch.

“Show me!” Lam said, sweeping the box of daggers and swords into her dimensional container. Heng groaned, and Fenlale sighed heavily, but they all started to follow as Thayla scampered through the ruins, leading the way to the cellar full of ingots. Victor clapped Heng on the shoulder and grinned, shrugging his shoulders, and Heng groaned again, more loudly.

“Don’t rub it in, kid!” He shrugged out of Victor’s grip, and Fenlale smiled broadly, shaking a fist up and down, which was something Victor had learned he did when he wanted to laugh.

It turned out the horde of amber ore alloy was more than even Captain Lam had hoped for. She had to use three different dimensional storage devices to scoop it all up, and even then, she was in a hurry to get out of the mines and cash it in because two of her storage devices were so full that she was worried about their stability. She’d promised Victor and Thayla a reward but then marched them double-time back to the barricade and the other delvers. As they arrived, she called out, “Sergeant Fath!” The angry-looking Ardeni man hustled over, his deep baritone voice booming a reply.

“Yes, Captain?”

“I have to hurry to the surface. Make sure the miners wrap up their work, then bring the unit back to the barracks. Tomorrow will be another day off.”

“Yes, Captain!” As Fath saluted, Captain Lam launched into the air, steaking up the crevice to the next cavern. Fath turned to the four delvers and grinned, “Found something good, eh?”

“Aye, some weapons and a huge haul of amber ore alloy. I’d say Lam just made more money than the entire mine will produce in the next week,” Heng said, scratching at his chin.

“You don’t say,” Sergeant Fath said, shaking his head ruefully. “The privilege of command, eh? Which one of you found it? Or did the captain find it?”

“Me and Fenlale found the weapons, but these two found all the ore,” Heng replied.

“Alright, you all take it easy, seeing how you got everyone a day off tomorrow. We’ll head up in a couple of hours.” With that, Sergeant Fath moved over to the ore vein and began to excoriate the miners about their progress. The four delvers moved off to the side and sat with their backs to one of the cavern walls. Victor took his pack off and dug out an old roll he’d tucked away, and began to gnaw on it.

“That what you brought for lunch?” Heng laughed at him. Victor just shrugged and continued to chew the hard, dry bread. Thayla snorted and tossed him an orange fruit that looked sort of like a peach.

“Hey, thanks,” Victor said, taking a bite; it was sweet and reminded him a lot of an apple.

“You’re welcome.”

“Hey, can I ask you guys a personal question?” Victor looked around the small group.

“How personal?” Thayla asked, tilting her head and frowning. Heng just snorted and shrugged, and Fenlale, as usual, just ignored Victor, munching away on some sort of grain mix he had in a small sack.

“Well, I mean, I’m trying to figure this whole Energy thing out, and I was wondering what kinds of Cores you all have. I was told my kind of Core is unusual among ‘civilized’ people—it’s a spirit Core.”

“Yeah, I knew something was weird about your Energy because I felt your light orb affecting me,” Thayla said.

“Well, yeah, my Energy is attuned; that light orb had inspiration-attuned Energy in it.”

“Hmph,” Heng grunted, chewing on a hunk of dried meat.

“I don’t have any attunements. I have a pearl-class Core; it’s pretty simple, and I only have pure Energy.” She held out a hand, and a small ball of shimmering yellow light formed over her hand. “See? My light spell is just a light.”

“Are attunements rare?”

“Nah,” Heng said, finally having swallowed his mouthful of dry meat. “But, and I’m not trying to be insulting here, spirit Cores are more common among primitive people like Urghat or the tribes on the Beneset Steppes. Lots of Ardeni and Shadeni have different sorts of attunements or affinities, as most people call them. Many have some elemental affinity, but they usually also have some pure Energy in their Core. Your Energy is all attuned?”

“Yeah, as far as I can tell.”

“That’s interesting. At least you have a nice attunement; it seems inspiration could be pretty useful. My aunt has a sapphire-class Core and affinities for decay and air; she’s been able to create a lot of powerful spells mixing the two,” Thayla said, taking a bite of cheese.

“Huh, that’s cool.” Victor tucked into his fruit, finishing it off in a few bites, and then he heard scuffling feet, looked up, and saw Edeya had walked over.

“Hey, everyone! I heard you found something good? We get the day off tomorrow, again!”

“Aye, Captain probably has to go into town to deal with her new riches,” Heng said, a chuckle in his voice.

“What’s up, Edeya? You guys have to fight any demons or anything?” Victor asked.

“Nah, it’s been so boring here! The miners just chip away at that vein, and we stand around picking our butts.”

“Least you didn’t have your life almost sucked out of your neck by a creepy gray tentacle tree,” Victor grinned, giving Thayla a nudge.

“Why are you talking? That thing was about to pull you into its mouth when I saved you!”

“True, true.” Victor laughed, motioning for Edeya to sit next to him.

“I can’t sit; Fath is going to scream at me any second now. Talk to you all later!” Edeya waved and meandered toward the barricade.

“You say your Energy is inspiration-attuned? It seemed like you went crazy during that fight with the beetles, and didn’t I hear Lam telling you to use your ‘berserk’ ability?” Heng asked while he dug around in his pack for something more to eat.

“Oh, yeah. I have a second affinity: rage.”

“Really?” Thayla regarded him more closely, then turned to Heng. “Isn’t that what the Corran Blood Ragers are famous for?”

“Hmm, yeah, now you mention it. I think they use blood magic, too, though. Blood and rage affinities.”

“Blood’s not a spirit affinity, though, is it? My aunt had classmates at the academy who had blood affinity.”

“I dunno,” Heng shrugged, looking at Fenlale, who also shrugged. Thayla looked at Victor.

“I don’t know either. I wish I had a teacher or something.”

“Victor, I’m happy to inform you that a blood affinity is not a spirit-based affinity.” Gorz piped up in Victor’s mind. He tried to process the info without looking strange.

“I don’t think it is. How could someone have a spirit affinity and a different kind of affinity at the same time?”

“Some kind of specialty Core, I guess. Probably tricky to form or something. It might require a certain bloodline or a secret process,” Thayla said.

“That’s correct. I don’t have the specifics, but one of the texts I read mentioned in a footnote that some spirit-casters, as the author labeled them, had traded potency for versatility by forming specialty Cores allowing for such diversity.”

“Interesting.”

“What?” Thayla asked.

“Oh, just the idea of having spirit affinities and other affinities.”

“I thought your Core was damaged, anyway,” Heng said, pointing at Victor’s iron collar.

“Oh, yeah, but I can dream, can’t I?” Victor stuffed the last of his hard roll into his mouth. Their conversation drifted to more mundane topics—what they’d get for dinner, how close everyone was to their quest completion, what they’d do with their free time the next day, and that’s when Heng said something interesting.

“I’ll probably volunteer at the well.” Fenlale shook his head at these words, and Thayla’s face got serious.

“What’s the well?” Victor looked at Heng.

“It’s a deep pit where creeps come crawling out at all hours of the day. The mine uncovered it about fifteen years ago. They sent a few expeditions in, but none of them got to the bottom without having to retreat. Now they just let volunteers kill the things that come up out of it,” Heng replied.

“Really? Is it worth it?”

“Ancestors, no!” Thayla said. “Who wants to fight imps and demons and fire hounds on their time off? I’ve had at least two friends go to ‘volunteer at the well’ and never return.”

“Bah, it’s not that bad!” Heng said. “Not to mention, you get credit toward your quests, and the Energy for killing that stuff isn’t bad. How you think I made it to tier two in here?”

“Well, I’m not going,” Thayla said with a snort.

“Who says I invited you?” Heng laughed, and Thayla threw the pit from her fruit at him.

“Do people really get free time that often? Where they can be volunteering to fight at some endless pit of monsters?” Victor didn’t think it made that much sense.

“Well, we get time off now and then when Captain Lam makes a big find; it’s the same deal for lots of the delver units. Some people in here don’t need much sleep, either, thanks to racial advancements. Those people come to the well and slaughter monsters regularly. Guess who keeps getting stronger?” Heng chuckled, obviously thinking of some particular people he knew.

“Can I come along, Heng?” Victor asked, his impulsive thought blurting out of his mouth.

“Sure, Victor.” Heng bit off another chunk of his dried meat and then threw the rest of it to Victor. “Better eat something besides fruit and old bread.”

When they got back to the barracks that evening, Heng told Victor they’d head out after breakfast. Victor decided to spend some time that evening working on his Core, so he made his way to the cultivation cave. He was a lot more relaxed this time, not worrying about hiding what he was doing; Lam had told him she didn’t care what was going on with his Core, and he figured anyone who took too much interest in him was just going to report what they saw to Lam or Fath. That said, he still found a somewhat secluded spot in a far corner of the cave behind a boulder.

“Gorz, what would happen if my strength was a lot higher than my agility or dexterity? Do I even need dexterity as a fighter? Isn’t that, like, fine motor skills?” Victor was asking because he still had seven points to spend, and he was thinking about putting them into strength; he might not have an axe, but if he were a lot stronger, his bludgeon might have hurt that gray tree thing all the same.

“With regard to fighting, having a strength that far outweighs your other physical attributes can cause you to have trouble controlling your weapon. Strength provides power and speed to your swing, but agility allows for movement and hand-eye coordination. Dexterity also plays a role in finer adjustments for targeting, blocking, and weapon manipulation. You wouldn’t see a real problem unless your strength was two or three times your other attributes, though.”

Victor looked at his attributes:

Energy Affinity:

3.1, Rage 9.1, Inspiration 7.4

Energy:

578/578

Strength:

35

Vitality:

62

Dexterity:

21

Agility:

21

Intelligence:

24

Will:

55

Points Available:

7

In his opinion, he was getting dangerously close to having an overbalanced strength. He decided that, as long as he was surviving based on his ability to fight, he’d have to add his free points to those physical stats, being careful not to pump one too much higher than the others. That said, he put three of his free points into strength and two each into dexterity and agility.

Looking at his status screen again, Victor was reminded that he still had a lot of work to do with his second affinity; his pool of Energy had recovered a lot since having his Core fractured, but most of that was due to his increased intelligence and will. There were still lots of little Energy pools and fragments floating in the space around his Core. “Time to get to work,” he said, beginning his cultivation drill, focusing on gathering up the little remnant fractures of his old Core and pulling them into the white-gold heart of his inspiration Energy.

Victor lost himself so thoroughly in the process, running through his drill again and again, that when he’d gathered up the last of the little fragments and opened his eyes to study his status screen, he realized he’d been at it most of the night. Still, the results spoke for themselves:

Energy Affinity:

3.1, Rage 9.1, Inspiration 7.4

Energy:

904/904

He stood up, stretched massively, and hurried back to the barracks. He knew he’d missed lights out, but he also knew that lots of people had seen him in the cultivation cave. If Sergeant Fath were looking for him, he’d have figured it out pretty quickly. When he crept through the big double doors and slinked into his cot, no one challenged him, and no angry Sergeant Fath stood in the aisle waiting for him.

Victor closed his eyes, knowing he’d only get a couple of hours of sleep but still feeling good about things. Since he’d eaten that fruit from the noblewoman and advanced his race, he had trouble sleeping more than four or five hours, and, in his mind, a little sleep deprivation to fix his Core wasn’t a big deal. So, it was with a wry smile and a yawn that he greeted Heng the next morning as the older man shook him awake.

“Ready?”

“Sure, can I grab some food?” Victor sat up on the side of his cot, stretching.

“Yeah, but make it quick; it’ll take us an hour to walk there, and I don’t want to spend the whole day fighting. I’d like to have time to do some shopping at the Stone.”

“Right,” Victor said, standing up and going over to the big table where he jostled for a seat and grabbed a plate of scrambled eggs, a hunk of bread smeared with butter, and a big mug full of watery wine—it was the only drink they ever served in the barracks. After wolfing down his food and doing his business in the jacks, he followed Heng outside and toward the big central settlement.

They’d only made it a few dozen steps when rapid footfalls came from behind them, and Victor turned to see Edeya running up. “Wait up!” she called, and Heng stopped to regard her.

“What’s up?” Victor asked.

“You guys are going to the well?” Heng nodded in response to her question.

“Can I come?”

“I don’t own the well,” Heng shrugged, “you can come or not—up to you.”

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Victor added. “Is it crowded there, Heng?”

“Nah, and if it is, we’ll fight down to one of the platforms, so we don’t have to compete for kills.”

“There’re platforms?” Edeya asked as they started walking again.

“Yeah, the mining company tried quite a few times to make headway down the well, and they set up forward camps—carved ‘em right outta the stone.”

“Huh,” Victor grunted, matching Heng’s quick pace. Edeya walked a little behind them, and she was unusually quiet during their walk. Victor thought about trying to draw her out, but, as usual, he was struggling with what to say without putting his foot in his mouth. Finally, he blurted, “Hey, why so quiet today, Edeya?”

“Hmm? Oh, nothing, just thinking about home. I’ve kind of lost track of the days, but I think it’s my sisters’ birthday. They’re twins.”

“Ahh, jeez, that sucks. I bet you wish you were there.”

“Hah, you think so?” she asked, and Heng snorted.

“Right.” Victor stopped talking; that’s what he got for trying to be understanding. He could tell Edeya wanted to talk some more, but he carefully avoided looking at her as they made their way through the big central settlement, this time taking a right through a narrow tunnel in the massive cavern wall. This new tunnel opened up into another huge tunnel, about half as big as the main central one, and they followed that for a while, past more shanties and ramshackle structures. They turned again and again, and soon Victor was wondering if he’d find his way back.

Heng hadn’t been lying; after about an hour of travel, they finally came to a stone wall with a massive metal door mounted to it. The door was designed to slide open on two steel beams about as wide as Victor’s thigh bolted to the stone. It was open about two feet when they arrived, and a sizeable Ardeni man in a mining consortium uniform was standing by it. “He’s there to close the door if the fighters get overwhelmed,” Heng explained. The Ardeni nodded to the three of them as they stepped through, and then Victor got his first look at the well.

The first thing he noticed was the high stone ceiling with two giant yellow Energy globes hanging from chains, making the room as bright as noonday. Then he saw the well—a pit in the stone about a hundred yards across with a stone ramp winding around its rim, leading into the depths. The ramp started about twenty paces from where they’d entered, and sitting around the top of the ramp were a dozen or so weary-looking delvers. The men and women held their batons in their fists and had eyes only for the pit, completely ignoring the newcomers.

“Pretty good crowd,” Heng said, “We might be heading down a bit.” He strode forward, and Victor and Edeya followed, their earlier bickering forgotten.