In the Shadow of Mountains - a litRPG adventure

Mistakes stack silently. Its only when they begin to fall that one takes notice.

– Saying of the Plutash River-Runners, transliterated by unknown member of the White Tower Consortium circa .122

The Iona Chasm was comfortingly out of sight and almost-but-not-quite out of mind by the time we stopped to make camp that evening. Nathlan was just gushing pride at his new class, and Jorge and Vera seemed appropriately impressed. I was no different, and we all spent plenty of time congratulating him – we even managed to convince Jorge to break out ‘the good stuff’ from his storage device later. I assumed it would be some sort of alcohol by the way that Nathlan and Vera cheered at the pronouncement, but when I asked, they just told me to wait and see with smug grins on their faces.

We slipped back into the usual divisions of labour, with Vera hunting, Nathlan laying out the camp and Jorge training me in weapons-craft for a bell or so until Vera returned. He was much more focused on teaching me specific stances this time, and was trying to get me to resonate with the intent of the spear as a weapon.

Apparently, traditional sparring was leaning too much into my tendency to ‘turn simple fights into messy scraps’ as he put it – I preferred to think of it as improvising while under pressure. Either way, no more picking up the generals of combat while learning a few specific moves each night. No, now I was being drilled in katas and patterns, which felt very unusual to me. Fights were messy, hard to predict and didn’t fit with the polished stances I was moving through.

I wasn’t going to argue with the experts though and spent as much focus as I could muster towards visualising my enemy, considering how my weight was distributed with each step and thrust, and how much coverage my shield provided at each point in the movements.

Once Vera returned with a brace of rabbits, I went to fetch water from a nearby spring – the reason for our chosen campsite – to aid with the cooking. I then washed myself and after returning set about preparing some of the fresh chives and shallots that Jorge had procured from who knew where.

He’d promised that we’d be doing more foraging as well, after finding out that my lowest skill was Wilderness Survival Hunter. Apparently, to level a skill you needed to work on each of its constituent parts, hence the danger of creating too broad a skill and being unable to level it at a solid pace. Breadth vs depth seemed to be a theme with the system, and I had been neglecting the Hill Foraging and Meat Preparation parts of my merged skill.

I had asked why you couldn’t simply unmerge a skill from the larger merged skill without harming either of them and Jorge had rambled on about balance, the system and some other rubbish. It’s not that I didn’t believe him, it’s just that none of it made any sense to me – the rules seemed sensible on the surface but if you dug too deep, it was all built on a shaky foundation in my opinion.

So I decided to just take his word for it that unmerging a skill was almost impossible and to just make sure to only add skills to a merged one if you were confident you would use them for ever, or were happy to abandon the larger merged skill at a later date. Apparently, I shouldn’t be worried about my Wilderness Survival Hunter though because it was fairly easy to add cooking and food preparation skills to a merged skill that already contained something tangentially related to them – example being my Meat Preparation skill – and ‘everyone needs a good cooking skill’ anyway.

I was suspicious that this was just a ploy to get me to take on the cooking for the party, but it did need doing, and I was happy to help regardless of the task. Jorge approached just as I had placed the four skinned rabbits on a chopping board to skewer. It seemed like suspicious timing, and that was only confirmed when he reached into his storage device and pulled out a large, thick cloth sack. He dumped a handful of the citrus-smelling ground herb onto the chopping board and placed down a yellow glass vial next to it. I hadn’t seen where he’d pulled that one from but was more interested in the specific items and their purpose than their origin at this moment.

“What are these?”

He looked down at me with a knowing grin. “Don’t you worry about that lad, put some hair on your chest this will!” He chuckled to himself and explained further, “Just mix a spoon or so of the yellow jar with those herbs to form a paste and baste the rabbits with them before you put ‘em over the fire. Trust me, it’s a favourite for a reason.”

He slapped me on the shoulder and walked off before I could ask anything else, so I got to mixing.

The firelight crackled as I lay on my back, staring at the stars above as they writhed and danced through the heavens. I could hear Vera to my right giggling with a carefree abandon I had never heard from her before, as she wrestled Nathlan into submission again and again. I’d watched the first few times as he’d demanded a rematch, but the bouts had always ended within a dozen heartbeats, and always with Nathlan being tickled mercilessly on the ground. He would let out a wheezing laugh before descending into coughing, at which point Vera would back off, he’d inevitably try to stand to his feet again and the whole cycle would repeat.

We were now on cycle 37, and neither had shown any sign of tiring so far. Jorge had slipped away early on to dance around the fire in a whirling, whooping pattern of stomping, flaring his arms and crying out into the night. It may have been intimidating in any other context but with the sounds of sibling squabbling beside me and the frankly ridiculous combination of a lack of trousers and massive elephant trunk and silver tusks protruding from his face, he just looked unbalanced and ungainly.

I returned my gaze to the heavens and tried to find the patterns in the night sky above me. There was something there, just out of reach. Stars flew across the firmament, and I could feel my mind stretching at the edges as I traced their trajectories. My soul was humming, the constellations of my skills vibrating in rhythm with the heavenly dance above.

‘The good stuff’ was clearly some sort of experience-altering drug, able to loosen Nathlan and Vera up until they were rolling on the ground like children again, despite their usually reserved and stoic personalities. I had no idea what it was doing to Jorge though, and where he could have got the trunk and tusks from was not worth even guessing over…some people just had fragile minds though and would go to crazy lengths when under the influence.

After a few moments of squinting over at the raging lunatic, I did think the appendages were far too well-sealed to his face, and I was starting to suspect the drugs may be having more of an effect on me than I realised. At that moment, his eye slipped down his face, and was slurped back up the trunk before returning to its rightful place. Yep, definitely the drugs.

But then why was my mind so clear? I was on the verge of an epiphany; I could feel it. Some intangible, mystical awareness that the truths of the universe were within grasp, if only I could focus enough to-

Thoughts exploded from my head, trickling down in a rain of visible words over my face and tinkling to the ground. The bright letters melted into the grass after falling from my head, and I clutched at them desperately, gathering them between my fingers and cradling them into my shirt as I cried in anguish at losing such profound understanding.

I looked up with recrimination at the elephantine figure that had knocked me over. “How could you!? I was so close! I nearly had it, you fucking trunk-fucking elephant-looking…gaaagh!!”

Pure rage stole the sense from my words and I ended with an unintelligible shout of fury, tears running from my eyes and floating words dissolving to purple sludge in the crook of my shirt.

*Jorge*

Jorge looked on in confusion at the frankly psychotic-looking meltdown Lamb was having at his feet. He looked over at where Vera and Nathlan were chatting casually, occasionally uttering a low chuckle or quiet snort at a particularly funny part of each other’s stories.

He’d just returned from stoking the fire for a bit to find Lamb lying flat on his back, staring at the stars, completely insensate and muttering to himself. He was about to pull out the bottle of Duganese rot-gut he had picked up a few months ago and had been saving for a special occasion – it wasn’t as bad as the name implied, as long as you didn’t think too carefully about the production process – but had noticed that the boy seemed to be struggling with something.

When he had tapped Lamb on the shoulder though, the lad leaped nearly to his feet, fell to his knees screaming and frantically cast about on the floor, pulling up fistfuls of grass and shoving them into his shirt like a crazy person. The others noticed at that point, looking over in confusion, until Lamb called him some frankly bizarre names – at which point Vera actually cackled, and Nathlan failed to supress a grin.

He was well and truly stumped by the behaviour, and after a discreet skill activation to confirm no foreign influence on the boy, turned to address the others.

“Any ideas what this is all about?” he said, waving in the general direction of Lamb’s prone, sobbing form.

Vera and Nathlan spoke at the same time, the former asking “What are you talking about? Could you be more specific, Sir Elephant-fucker?” while the later started on in on a long trail of speculation. Jorge shot the large woman a look to convey his disappointment, which had less than no effect on her at all since her smug smile stayed well and truly in place, and tuned into what Nathlan was saying.

“…and so I’d suggest one of two primary causes; either he has somehow been poisoned by the venom of an Mnukaa Tree-Frog, or it’s a strange reaction to the Shingen spice you gave him for the rabbits. Did you see him eat more than normal? Ingest any of the spice raw perhaps?”

Jorge shook his head, but Vera’s smile slipped as she interrupted. “He was cooking though! What if he was too close to the fire while turning the spits? Does Shingen spice still have hallucinogenic effects when inhaled?”

“It still doesn’t seem like the dose would be high enough for this though.” Jorge commented, gesturing again at the slumped and incoherently muttering form of Lamb nearby.

It was Nathlan’s turn to shake his head though, “No the dose is far too low for an effect to be seen from ingesting as far as I know. But I’ve read somewhere that the monks of Amin-Ra sometimes use incense sticks flavoured with Shingen spice to alter their perspectives and achieve enlightenment.”

Vera looked very smug as Jorge asked, “What in the hells were you reading about to discover that?”

Nathlan just shrugged. “I can’t remember, but it’s possible that the smoke has a powerful hallucinogenic effect if the monks use it in that fashion.” A quick glance at Lamb’s pathetically slumped form, “plausible even.”

He pulled himself up, letting out a weary sigh before asking for help from Vera to shift Lamb to his bedroll. The sobbing had turned to quiet sniffles now, and the poor lad looked utterly wrung out from the no-doubt terrifying trip he was clearly experiencing.

He was sure to wake tomorrow with a splitting hangover, no matter what form it took. At least the bastard wouldn’t be so sprightly in the morning anymore, even if just this once.

I woke suddenly, sweat cooling on my forehead from a gentle breeze, my hair ruffling against my face where it had earlier been stuck to it. I rose and stretched, letting out a satisfied groan as every vertebrae in my back popped in sequence. It felt like it anyway, whether or not it was anatomically possible.

I yawned and rubbed the sleep from my eyes, looking around at the early dawn light bathing our camp with its gentle yellow hue. I heard a chuckle behind me and turned to see Jorge seated near the remains of the fire, stirring life back into the embers and putting a full kettle into the fire-bed.

“Rough night? How’s the head, lad?” He said with a smile, looking inordinately pleased with himself for some reason.

A yawn interrupted my reply, but I persevered. “I feel….great, man. My joints are all fluid and smooth, and everything is so ridiculously colourful today! How about you?”

His smile dropped and when I plopped down next to him by the fire, he huffed and mumbled something to himself that sounded suspiciously like “damn kids”.

“What was that?” I asked innocently.

“Forget it. You remember anything?”

I wriggled into the grass, enjoying the sensation of the cool strands against my skin while I stretched further. “Nah not really. I remember some pretty strong emotions, but not sure what caused them. Did we start drinking heavily or something?”

Something niggled at the back of my mind, and I tried to catch the memory as it flitted away. Something to do with the sky, the stars. I tuned out Jorge’s rambling explanation of the last night and pursued the thought, struggling to pin it down. Finally, after at last recalling a hollow memory of whirling stars, I dove into my soul, visualising my core.

The pin-prick of light had grown slightly. I only recognised the change because I had spent so long over the last few weeks inspecting it intensely during meditation sessions, attempting to manipulate it. It was larger, more full and somehow more solid in the empty space within my soul. A welcome change but nothing too surprising – I had been thinking of my soul like a muscle recently. I could exercise it, pressure it and force it to grow, but most of the progress would only come as a result of rest after intense stimulus.

I turned my focus instead to my skills, and there I found the true difference. The whirling constellations hanging above my core were still distinct entities, and they hadn’t grown in size or complexity. But there was a solidity to them now. Just like my core, they seemed more real in the space they inhabited, more connected to one another despite the lack of obvious physical – metaphysical I suppose really – links between one another.

I observed the seven spinning, twirling constellations surrounding my core. Each had a distinct pattern, although I was still far from understanding it. It seemed familiar, and I instantly recognised them for what they were, but only while inhabiting my soul-space. I knew from previous experience that leaving my introspection would also mean letting go of the temporary understanding I had for these representations of my skills.

I could no more draw out the tangled mesh of starlight on a page than I could describe their twisting shapes to another. I had tried enough times before, but Jorge had assured me it was a matter of time and familiarity. The more I understood my skills, made them a part of myself, the easier I would find it to communicate about them to others. I was still weary of using other language to describe my soul, even to myself, and so I put the thoughts away as I stared longingly at the beautiful sight before me.

Seven constellations orbiting my core, and a single space left. One hung higher than the others, dominating the vista above the others – my bound skill, Indomitable Prey – but even it couldn’t make up for the unsightly gap left by my last unassigned skill. I sighed and left the meditative state, toggling back into what Jorge was saying even as I simultaneously lamented my continued lack of weapons skill and congratulated myself on the increasing solidity of my other skills.

“Kids these days have no bloody respect, that’s the problem. Lad spends a single night contemplating the cosmos and thinks that gives him an excuse to ignore a system-titled expert? Arrogance! I turned Vera from a rage-drunk berserker into a tactical powerhouse in a decade, and some overgrown turnip thinks he doesn’t need to listen just cus he’s got a fancy bound-skill and a nice class? I should-“

“Oh! Hey Lamb, glad you’re back with me. Sprinkle some of this into the pot there would ya?”

I looked at him suspiciously for a few moments. “It’s not gonna get me high as a kite again, is it?”

He laughed and slapped my hand, urging me to do as he said. “No don’t be silly, It’s tea. Nathlan will need a wake up as his…soul…is still settling into the new configuration of his class, and so he’ll be more tired than usual.” He took a few moments to recall the terms I preferred to use, which was considerate of him.

“And Vera?”

“Oh, she’s just a battleaxe in the morning. You’ll want to give her a hot cup first thing for your own protection if nothing else” he said with a smirk, as I crushed the leaves he passed to me and twisted them into the figure-eight pattern I’d been shown weeks ago, before submersing them into the kettle and placing it back in the fire. The metal was hot to the touch, but my enhanced endurance gave me a fair bit of resistance to temperature extremes, and with a small cloth I had no issues.

We bantered for a little longer before Vera roused herself and I moved to wake Nathlan. Once they were settled around the remains of the fire, I eased back and let the gentle conversation flow over me, relaxing in the warm morning with a hot cup of fragrant tea.