Broken Lands

“You won’t really notice it at your level,” Arryn continued. “Level one abilities aren’t any stronger than ones a similarly focused Profession can have, and that’s what the restriction seems to scale to. We think it’s to protect civilians, because more violent abilities are restricted more, especially if they’re large. A siege mage like Sophia would find her Abilities far more limited than a healer like Dav, if you were capable of large enough spells for it to matter.”

Sophia stared at the road like it was a snake that might bite her. She could see the appeal of reducing the impact of powerful Abilities, but at the same time she didn’t like the idea. “Does it affect mana manipulation, too?”

“Anything the Guide gave you,” Arryn confirmed. “It’s pretty common for Called to cause problems. especially if they get a bit drunk while they’re safe in town. The restriction means the Town Guard can deal with them, even though Called are far stronger out in the wild. It also means that people are more likely to survive a monster attack.”

Sophia shook her head at that. She couldn’t argue; she’d grown up around delvers, and it wasn’t that unusual for them to celebrate a successful delve with alcohol and a bar fight. As long as it happened at an Adventurer’s Guild, which was always built to contain the damage and had people available to contain the delvers, there was no need to get the local police involved. Some Guild buildings even had separate bars for people who specifically wanted to avoid a fight.

The one thing that was still up in the air was if the enchantment on the road actually stopped magic use or simply limited the abilities granted by the Guide. Sophia couldn’t tell and it sounded like Arryn thought it was everything but also wasn’t clear on the distinction.

Peaches moved onto the road; Revina was right behind the wagon, apparently unbothered by the power emanating from the cobblestones. Without much of a choice in the matter, Sophia and Dav followed. It felt like a soft weight around her, not stopping anything but maybe blunting things a little, sort of like a heavy coat that didn’t protect her from what little wind there was.

Three hours later when they stopped for the night, Sophia had gotten used to the weight of the road. It was nice to step off the road to set up camp, sort of like stretching, but the road’s enchantment no longer felt obtrusive.

Soon after they set up camp for the night, the sky opened and rain fell down in torrents. They all grabbed their dinners and hid away from the rain. Sophia and Dav retreated to their tent. Revina and Peaches both joined Arryn inside the wagon.

The rain lulled Sophia to sleep. By morning, it was long gone and the only sign it had happened was a few puddles and tacky ground where there wasn’t any ground cover. “Rain must not have lasted long.”

“It never does near Casterville,” Arryn confirmed with a frown. “Blows up out of nowhere and is gone almost as quickly. You won’t be able to tell it rained in a couple of hours. If it happens while we’re traveling, we’ll stop where we are and all take cover in the wagon.”

“You don’t seem happy about it,” Sophia noted. She didn’t see the problem with a quick rain.

Arryn shook his head. “The problem isn’t the rain itself, it’s what the rain means. It could be nothing, but it could also be stormbirds. As quickly as it came, I want to say it was, and that means there’s a chance for trouble. Keep an eye out while we travel; we should be fine on the road, but that doesn’t mean we can afford to be taken by surprise.”

Packing up the campsite took longer than usual. They started with building a new fire, but that meant cleaning out the old wet ashes had to happen before anything else, as did cleaning the previous night’s dishes. Everything was like that, half-done tasks that were abandoned for the rain had to be completed before they could get anywhere. Getting moving in the morning took a full hour longer than it had on previous nights even though there was only a single tent that had to be repacked.

An hour after they got going, the mist was gone and the sun was fierce. Unfortunately, the humidity from the rain was still there. It was miserable weather to walk in. Even Arryn’s stories didn’t do much to pass the time. By the time the light started to fade and they started looking for a campsite, Sophia was more than ready to be done with the day; for once, she thought she’d use the more delicate features of her tent. Climate control was expensive in terms of mana, but sometimes it was worth it.

“Peaches, stop.” Arryn sounded stern. When Sophia looked over at him, he was frowning and staring ahead and to the left.

Sophia turned to follow his gaze. “Is that smoke?”

“I think so,” Arryn confirmed. He sounded serious, even concerned. “We’re going to keep going for a bit and see what’s happening. I hope that’s the forest.”

It was clear that there was something he hoped it wasn’t. Sophia could think of several things it might be, and only one of them made any sense to head towards, especially in a hurry. “You think there are people there?”

“There’s a town in that direction, a town without a Nexus, a lot like Fallen Kestii. Grisanton is on a hill and has walls, but walls don’t stop everything and they don’t have the wards Vramt established. They have saferooms and the Road instead. If they can get there.” Arryn shook his head. “If it’s the forest, we’ll see them running this way; they’re close enough they won’t want to stay for a fire. If it’s the town, we’ll have to see what’s going on before we know what to do.”

They hurried towards the smoke. Peaches grumbled about the increased pace but kept going without any signs of actually tiring. Sophia wasn’t certain how she knew that Peaches was grumbling mostly for form’s sake and was actually a little eager and looking forward to seeing Grisanton, but she knew he was. She assumed it was from his aura; she must be reading the subtle clues in the way it flowed. That usually required knowing a person well, like reading body language could, but it was entirely possible and usually happened at a level below consciousness.

At least, she assumed it until Cliff announced in Sophia’s head, “I just Collected the Giant Sloth! It’s not quite complete, I don’t know what the Abilities are, but I know a lot about the monster!”

Sophia blinked and nearly tripped over her own feet. She hadn’t thought about Cliff in days and she certainly hadn’t expected to suddenly see a display of Peaches’ abilities flash in front of her eyes.

Peaches

Abilities: Unknown

Abilities: Unknown

Giant Sloth

(Claw Image)

Body: 22

Core: 2

Shield: 100

Wisps: Unknown

Spheres: Giant Sloth (Monster)

Level: 10

Sophia dismissed the message, but noted that Peaches was far stronger than she’d expected. He was also noted specifically as a monster, which told her that “monster” meant something specific. There wasn’t anything about him being tamed, either. That might mean he wasn’t or it might mean Cliff couldn’t see it.

This was the first time Cliff had actually shown her what it learned. Sophia had the feeling that it wouldn’t be the last, though the clear implication was that she had to interact with something enough for Cliff to learn about it, and “enough” was a fuzzy metric. Sophia had no idea what put her over the top; was it figuring out how Peaches felt or did she figure out how Peaches felt because Cliff learned enough about Peaches?

“Thanks,” she whispered at Cliff. She wasn’t certain how to feel about Peaches, though it did make Arryn’s confidence that Peaches could scare off anything that came near them make a lot more sense. It also made her wonder just how powerful the old man was; Level Ten seemed high, but she didn’t really have a scale. 22 Body also seemed high, though that was more because of how expensive it probably was to buy than because she had any real scale for how powerful it was.

Was Arryn more powerful or not? He almost certainly wasn’t stronger than Peaches, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t more powerful in his own way. He’d already shown that he had hidden depths.

Sophia’s attention returned to the outside world before they were able to make anything out about the fire, but it wasn’t long before she could see people milling around on the road.

Peaches started to slow the moment he saw the crowd; it took until they were actually quite close to the jumble of people that he was back down to the walking pace he usually preferred. A look over at him told Sophia why he started to slow so early, even without Arryn’s instructions: he didn’t have a brake. Peaches was connected to the wagon only by a leather harness, which meant that he couldn’t slow the wagon down. It seemed like an oversight, which made Sophia wonder if Arryn had a brake of some sort. She hadn’t seen one, but she also hadn’t been in the wagon.

“Hey there!” Arryn called out. “What’s happening? Why are you all here?”

The crowd shouted back a number of different answers. Some of them were as unhelpful as “the alarm bell rang so we ran,” but others helped to give a picture of what was going on. Sophia watched as Arryn quickly questioned them; it was like watching her uncle get information from people. He somehow managed to get the people who didn’t actually know anything to feel like they’d been heard while he got the people who did know something to give all the details they could, and in only about five minutes they knew the bare bones of the story.

Monsters came out of the forest and attacked the town from the east. They came right over the walls; one villager said he saw them “like a furry wave.” No one seemed to be quite certain what sort of monster they were, but everyone seemed to be certain that they were furry and flaming, though some of the villagers claimed that only the big ones were actually on fire. There was a wide range of sizes, everything from the size of a small dog to man-sized, though everyone agreed that they hadn’t seen any as large as Peaches.

Unfortunately, everyone also agreed that the town was in flames and there were still people in the town. Arryn quizzed them for the locations of the saferooms; it turned out those were in the walls.

When he was done talking to the villagers, Arryn turned to Sophia, Dav, and Revina. “You three have a choice; you can stay here and watch for monsters or you can come with me and try to help evacuate the safe rooms. You shouldn’t try to fight the monsters; there are far too many for the three of you. Peaches and I will handle that. Which do you want to do?”

Sophia glanced at the villagers, then back at Arryn. “Are the monsters likely to come here? Do the villagers really need to be guarded?”

Arryn shook his head. “With the town still under attack? Probably not, and even if they do, the locals should be able to defend themselves as long as they stay on the Road. It wouldn’t hurt to leave someone here, but it’s not necessary.”

That made the decision easy. “Then I’m coming with you.”

Once Sophia made her choice, both Dav and Revina chimed in supporting her decision, in that order. Sophia could tell that Dav was eager to head into the town and see what was going on, but she couldn’t tell if Revina agreed because she wanted to or because everyone else was going. It didn’t really matter.