Chapter 42: Ch. 38: Detour

Skill: [Appraisal]

Designation: Inspection Type

A crafter’s best friend. This is a versatile skill for all those who work with magical and mundane items alike. This skill is used by Enchanters, Smiths, Artificers and all those who have specialised classes with the aforementioned as a prefix or suffix to the specialised class. Enchanters can use it to map out the integrity of rune matrices, Smiths can find out the quality of their metals and Artificers know what inclination their artificing materials are best for as they make their artifices and/or magic items. However, [Appraisal] is much more than that; this skill is versatile in that it allows crafters to know other crafter’s works from distinctive markings or emblems. Most magic items and artefacts bear their maker’s mark in the form of rune craft that provides information about the object. Can be rebuffed by Obfuscation artefacts, items and Anti-Appraisal wards-World Compendium of Skills , The Order of Vesper, Church of Thea.

---

[Mage Scout] Szephia stirred from her cross-legged trance and gazed somewhere only her iridescent swirling irises could see. She’d sensed a disturbance as she had been communing with the nascent spirits of the weald using her abilities as a faerieborn. Below her, the psychic array that focused the faerieborn’s magic pulsated with the same hue as her eyes as Illvari runes floated around her like glimmerflies. Mint-green hair hung suspended around her head, swaying as though underwater.

There was a hum like the rustling of a thousand leaves, like a thousand indistinct echoes whispering in the spherical chamber where the only illumination was the magic from the focus. Her ears twitched as she listened to a language she could understand, while her lips whispered a tongue both musical and enchanting. Her chant stopped as the glow went from her eyes. The ambient brightness of the scrying chamber gradually brightened.

Blinking, Szephia let out an exhale. Then she snapped out of her daze and jumped down from her perch on the psychic array which jutted out of the floor like a stump. Her hand flew to the brooch adorning her cuirass as she rushed out of the scrying chamber, wood peeling away to create her exit and then immediately closing behind her as if it had never been there before.

Aesylvani dialogue met her as she jogged down the stairs. The sound of movement and shuffling greeted her as she made it to the bottom of the landing. Her three compatriots roused from their game.

“ [Mage Scout] Szephia?” a lanky sylvani prompted.

Face set as she scanned over the rest of the cohort, Szephia replied, “ There is a great disturbance in the Shallows. Irindelle, alert the Mother Grove, we’re leaving post haste, Galaeron, check our supplies, Aithlith, ensure our telecry are in working condition.”

“ It shall be done [Mage Scout],” her three compariots saluted by thumping their cuirasses.

---

‘No!’ Nora’s gut knotted as she saw Arthur raise his sword. His hair was floating on its own accord as his eyes shone gold. Golden capillaries crawled underneath his skin, from his eyes and through whatever flesh of his throat she could see.

“ Master Arthur!” she cried. Her preternatural sense of danger prickled the hair at the back of her neck as the man plunged his sword into the ground. Lightning ripped from his hands, cracking skywards and downwards in tandem. The air exploded, and Nora gasped as she let herself fall backwards. She let herself get swallowed by the shadowscape.

Time slowed inside of it, but the encroaching magical backlash would push her out of it if she let it. Each step of her backpedalling moved her tens of metra away until she turned around and jumped, ducking behind the roots of the tree that had been their campsite.

She dropped out of [Shadow Walk] just in time for scalding air to scream above her, along with debris and clods of dirt. Unnatural brightness illuminated the vicinity, startling the weald life before it died as instantly as it had appeared. An eerie silence pervaded, swallowing the sound that had gone before it.

Nora blinked as her vampiric eyes adjusted to the dark. The chromastone lamp they’d been using for their watch had been knocked off its perch and was flickering on the mulched deadfall. The tent was unaffected as it had been out of the line of fire, but the air was more humid than before.

‘Arthur!’ Nora clamped her mouth with her palm as she scrunched her eyes shut again. Thoughts of Arthur’s wellbeing ran amok but Nora swallowed the anxiety threatening to bubble up her throat. The dhampir leaped up the roots that’d sheltered her, scrambling to get to the human.

Hearing about what had happened in the Dust to the bandits could scarcely compare to what she was actually seeing as she blazed towards Arthur’s prostrate form. Glazed earth scrunched underfoot as the smell of scorched dirt, grass, and singed leather entered her nostrils.

The lightning had gouged branching furrows on the ground and cratered the soil surrounding Arthur. The blue longsword Nora had seen unsheathed still stood, its lines of magic still visible even after its owner had been knocked out. Arthur’s wurmhide seemed to have been blackened and sported striations of lightning flowers that wrapped around his torso.

Before she knew it, Nora had already dashed within reach of him, turning his body and checking for breathing. His breathing was faint and, passing her hand over his chest, somehow felt an irregular heartbeat. While his skin looked raw as if he’d been scalded, none of that was of any concern as he was already healing. The chaotic mana that had been roiling in his system seemed to have been purged. What she could not explain was why his auburn hair had suddenly gone silver with bleached fringes.

Nora bit her lip in indecision. She did not know if she could use [Insight] to peer into his body and check on his condition. He hadn’t awoken, probably because of mana exhaustion. All that mattered was that Arthur was alive, but she'd have to move from the glade. The spectacle must have attracted attention, and someone or something could drop in on them. She didn’t put it past the clan head to know their whereabouts unless they moved.

‘Pits! I have to keep moving,’ Nora thought suddenly, wary of her surroundings. She extricated the scabbard from Arthur’s back to sheathe the sword before slinging it over her back. It was long but not enough to encumber her movements.

With a grunt, she awkwardly heaved Arthur’s broad body into a princess carry, almost letting out a curse as his weight caught her off balance. Her vampiric might powered through; she never realised just how heavy Arthur could be. The dhampir was spared a laborious and almost awkward trudge of carrying someone who had some weight and height on her by using her [Shadow Walk] to blur into the campsite;

Putting down the man with frenetic movements, she gathered everything they’d used to make camp. She heaved a sigh of relief, thanking the Primals that he’d left the knapsack with the spatial enchantments; Nora knew he had another artefact of the same kind.

Then she moved to the site where she’d picked him up and started looking for his hoverboard. She found it trapped in the shrubbery. Luckily, the mouth of the knapsack could be opened wide enough to admit the craft.

And when that was done, Nora picked up Arthur again and steeled herself for the journey ahead. She would push her [Shadow Walk] to its utmost but within conservative bounds that ensured Arthur would not bear the burden of movement. She was going to keep each [Shadow Walk] within 30 kardions instead of a full par.

Within a quartz, she made 15 consecutive jumps of her [Shadow Walk] covering close to 2 kilia before she had to recover her mana. Each jump into the shadowscape must have covered at least 120 metra and for the first 3 quartz, she did it without diminishing returns until she felt wrung out. Chaining her [Shadow Walk] had left her out of mana so much that she was unable to spare some for [Shadow Shroud].

Six quartz later, when dawn made itself known, she decided to find a place to rest up. Arthur had yet to wake, but she could sense the changes in his body. It was only a matter of time.

Unfortunately, that is when they found her. Were it not for her vampiric senses, she would have been caught entirely off-guard.

“ I know you’re there,” Nora called out, whirling as she scanned the vicinity. She did not draw her khxizhos because that meant escalation. But if they had a ranged attacker, she just had to use her [Shadow Walk] to make herself momentarily incorporeal.

Everything had gone deadly silent around her, but the fact they hadn't attacked meant they didn't want to kill her. Which meant that it wasn't the clan that had come after her—she'd put a lot of distance between her and the last glade. Which left only one group of people she'd rather not tangle with—the Weald Watch.

Nora would rather not have fought against them on their turf if she could help it. Besides, a defensive fight was something she had never done before. It would make her fight with reservation if she knew that Arthur could be used as leverage over her.

---

“ Stay your arms!” said a mellifluous voice. Nora flinched as the originator of the voice entered her awareness. She seemed as though she'd walked out of the tree right across from her.

“ What business do you have in the Shallow Wealds, outsider?”She asked. There was no tension in her, but the position of her hand on her sword’s pommel made it known that she was no less wary. “ And from whence do you hail?”

The hair prickled at the nape of her neck. She felt more eyes bore into her. The sounds of people shifting on their perches and breaths released from drawing ranged weaponry gave away the position of three more. One of them was in the canopy above her. She didn’t so much as flinch to show that she knew their position.

“ We were passing by,” Nora replied truthfully. “ We came through the ridges.”

“ Preposterous. The ridges are inhabited by stone trolls and tribal goblins.“ the woman said, as her eyes narrowed with suspicion. Nora could not meet the other woman’s eyes. In fact , her eyes had been watching her feet all the while. The cowl was pulled low, obscuring her crimson eyes, and the shadows made it even harder to see her face. Of course, that did not stand.

“ Shed your cowl and lay your arms where we can see them,” the sylvmaid said as her eyes widened in realisation.

‘Pits take me,’ she tensed. Her mana pool was barely enough for two jumps. She was already on the backfoot. The glade was also small, which put the mint-haired woman a few paces within attacking distance. That did not bode well for Nora, since they had the longer reach. She was outnumbered, and fighting was not something that she could see herself doing, not with Arthur indisposed.

‘ Pits,’ She cursed under her breath. Maybe she shouldn’t have let her skills stay unused. Even if that fight with the golem had been a coin toss, she would have survived. As for the Sylvani Watch? They were an unknown quantity. Perhaps she could explain her way out of that.

Steeling herself for what was to come, Nora pulled back her cowl, letting her platinum-blonde tresses cascade over her shoulders. In the low dawnlight, they saw her pale skin and frosty eyelashes. When the sylvmaid saw her crimson eyes, she jerked back, drawing her sword with the same motion.

Someone swore and the sound of three bows groaning entered her awareness. Nora suddenly stumbled, finding that grass had suddenly grown on her feet and that thorny vines were crawling up her legs.

“ [Counter Magic]! Irindelle, hail the Mother Grove, tell them we have a daywalker in our hands; Galaeron check the male for thralling; Aithlith keep those magebane arrows primed and watch the weald,” the slyvmaid snapped.

Her sword was already posed for a lunge if Nora so much as twitched. The feeling of mana being evacuated from her surroundings was enough to make her feel naked as her mana pool was suddenly not picking up anymore of it. The Dhampir let her curved blades fall to the ground and sighed for what was to come.

“ Daywalker, I will have your word that you shall not use your magic,” the yet to be introduced sylvmaid said as she walked towards Nora with her sword pointed at Nora’s heart. Shuffling and a light thump behind her told her all she had to know that someone had landed between the buttress roots to check on Arthur.

“ It’s hard to say if he’s thralled [Mage Scout]. He is likely asleep from some form of exhaustion; it would be remiss to presume unless we have a qualified [Healer] on hand. I see no marks or signs of injury. However, there were lightning scars on his armour.” From behind her came a voice, Galaeron, if she was not mistaken.

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“ It seems we have found our disturbance,” the sylvmaid said. “ Irindelle, send for a wyvern gondola. We are getting that human out of here.”

‘Master Arthur will not be pleased,’ Nora thought as the leader of the cohort retrieved mage-binders and motioned for her to extend her wrists. She could protest, but the sylvani were generally known for being either reasonable or vindictive, with no in between.

If she wanted to get out of this unscathed, she would have to comply. With a clamp, the mage-binders settled on her wrists before the [Counter Magic] area of effect spell fell. The feeling of emptiness, as if her being had been scooped hollow, took hold, locking her out of her abilities.

---

Arthur groaned, stirring from his slumber. His waking sensations were akin to waking up after sleeping away with a cold and blocked nostrils. His head felt oddly clearer than before, and the splitting migraine that had assaulted him was nowhere to be found. But for the feeling of being bedsore, he would have thought he’d slept for several days. He rubbed at the nape of his neck with one arm and righted himself with the other as he opened his eyes to survey his surroundings.

‘Damn, I have to stop waking up under strange ceilings,’ he mused, looking at his foreign dwellings. To be honest, he wasn’t sure what he was looking at. Everything about it felt so foreign that it clashed with his conventions of what habitation should have looked like.

Firstly, the room was dome shaped with smooth walls that were a rich oak brown with the grain showing through. The ceiling had lunette vaulted beams that meshed with the shape of the walls, giving it the appearance of an igloo. The space between the beams was as though it had been shaped with a giant ice cream scoop.

The room had minimalist furnishings and rounded corners. His bed, wardrobe, and floating bedside dresser all looked like they were grown out of one tree rather than worked by a craftsman's hands. The wood retained all its grain and swirls, and were it not for its hardness, he would have thought the furniture was still alive. The illumination was from a smoothly worked chromastone that looked like a golden egg inside multi-colored rose petals of stained glass.

“ Nora?” He called out, pulling off the tufted quilt that formed his bedding. It had the consistency of a carpet of moss and looked to have different clumps of green, from a greyish green to a deep blue green. He levered himself off the bed onto a warm wooden floor that looked like it had been waxed recently.

On his left was a pair of diaphanous bay windows that followed the curvature of the room. They were green, almost translucent, and looked like the inner wings of a giant beetle, along with the vein striations. They might as well have been gigantic leaves; who knew? And the curtains were drawn too, and judging by the darkness, he wagered that it was already night.

'Well damn, what is this now? A hobbit house?’ He gawked at the room as he walked towards the only doorway he could see. He slid back the tambour door that followed the curvature of the wall and peered into the room beyond.

The next room was dark, but the cone of light spilling from his bedroom was enough to see that it was a living room that was just as wide as the one he’d just left. There was a crescent moon shaped seating area with cushions arrayed around a circular table top. He fumbled around the wall for a switch but found none―

‘Huh?’ he muttered in befuddlement. He was still taking everything in as though waking from a lucid dream. He frowned as the reality of things sunk in; the incident at the glade made his eyes go round. ‘Ugh,’ he groaned, shunting away the memory from his wandering mind.

“[Light]!” he muttered, calling forth a magelight. ‘What in the blue?’ he thought, confused when he didn’t feel the tell-tale sensation of magic coming out of him. However, the lights did come on from an outgrowth of branches holding aloft a chandelier of glass bell flowers. And that is when he noticed the chonky manacles encircling his wrists. They had been so light he didn’t even realise they were there.

His eyes went round when he realised he'd been stripped of everything except for his two rings. At least they were not so uncouth as to try to remove them. His wurmhide armour had also been swapped for an airy tunic that was teal in colour, with straight seams and wide sleeves like a Japanese shitagi undershirt.

Apart from his jeans, that was all he had on him. But the dark chonky manacles on his wrists made his skin crawl, and he realised his magic was blocked. Casting his eyes around, Arthur was suddenly ill at ease after being deprived of his power. Even the porting ring did not work.

The room he’d stumbled into had two more doors on the side of his bedroom, and an alcove on the right, which seemed oddly out of place. Right ahead were spiral stairs and an open doorway to another room beyond.

To his left was an oval ceiling to floor panoramic window of stained glass whose upper bounds met with the transom of an arched doorway. On closer examination, the arch was closer to a circle with its bottom shorn off, leaving the door’s threshold as a flat chord.

---

“Damn, not again,” Arthur muttered as he blitzed towards the double doors on the left. More stained glass was interspersed with sunburst fretwork. He barely spared his eyes for the floral motifs as he threw them open, stepping out only to halt in his tracks.

Arthur stood aghast at the hemispheric porch hemmed by a balustrade of interweaving branches. An open gate lay in the middle and thereafter, a walkway of stepping stones connecting to a pergola followed.

To the sides were lush gardens of exotic plants, enclosed by an arching trellis of greenery that made the walkway look like a tunnel. The chirping of insects and flitting glimmerflies showed that it was, in fact, night.

Half in a trance, he stepped towards the pergola. The air smelled like damp moss, rain, and wet tree trunks. Beyond the garden fixture was an open, almost circular yard, and further still was the steady glow of a city. The youth, curious about his own dwelling, pivoted to face the residence. He was floored.

Through the gaps in the trellis, he saw the eco friendliest mash up of condos and geodomed treehouses he’d ever seen. His own residence was green in a literal sense.

Its roof was a catenary curve of moss and grass thatch. It melded into the eaves, rising and falling with the curve of the porch and windows like one of the Charlevoix Mushroom houses. He even expected to see a quartet of rotund multicoloured muppets with antennas come gallivanting out of them.

“I am in a scats-flipping solarpunk arcology!” he thought out loud as he drew his eyes skywards. Arthur’s megalophobia peeked out from a corner like a shy child at the sheer enormity of the fauna. His fears mingled with conflicting awe and made his legs go weak as he saw the trees that held the aerial neighbourhood.

Arthur recalled having once seen a clump of six sycamore trees grafted by a Swedish hobbyist who grew trees to form a sculpture of a basket. He saw that repeated here, but on a much grander scale and with more intricacy, forming a superstructure of interwoven trunks and diamond shaped hollows.

Arthur’s residence seemed to be one of the geodomed structures built on the budding boughs that sprouted beneath such hollows. Each bough grew out from the nexus of two trunks, then split out into smaller branches like fingers grasping the edges of a bowl on a palm.

Each branch grew upwards and was about the size of a small tree. It gave the homes the illusion of a nest in the midst of a grove. Jutting out past the branches were round enclosed balconies that met the open air like some sort of grand stage.

As for the pergola, it was covered by bioluminescent hydrangea and wisteria. The quaint garden fixture had bucket-shaped wicker chairs with thick padded cushions arrayed along its woven enclosure. There were stools made from the cross section of a tree stump with twisting legs, looking like something straight out of a DIY aesthetic.

Before he knew it, he’d stepped onto the yard through the smoothly worn steps of river stones. The circular yard had short cropped grass and was still wet with drizzle. Wooden railings and the tree-sized branches encircled it while a hitching post sprouted near its circumference.

Hands clenched on the balustrade, he gazed into the dizzying lights of the architecture sprawled across the horizon. The night was lit by a sea of floating yellow, orange, and blue flower bulbs. Their bodies trailed intertwining vines that disappeared into unknown depths.

The plants had to be hundreds of metra in the air and dotted the space above the town like giant bioluminescent jellyfish. Some of the boughs were unclaimed, hosting aerial meadows and groves of trees, ponds, and cascading waterfalls.

Lit walkways and scaffolding made of banyans straddled the girth of the trees, connecting other boughs through the hollows like suspension bridges to form aerial city streets. The thoroughfares and the buildings were like Venice at night awash with ornamental lighting and bioluminescent plants—that is, if you chose to imagine the vast hundreds of metra drop was filled with water.

‘Just how am I supposed to get out of this?’ he groaned. However, someone cut through his bedazzlement.

“Enchanting isn’t it?”A voice with a lilting accent came from behind him. The hair at the nape of his neck suddenly rose up.

“ Whoa?” Arthur whirled around to regard the intruder. He hadn't even heard her coming. Of course, given the nature of the dwellings and the fact that he’d been expecting sylvani. But still, he couldn’t help but gape at the faerie-like maiden approaching him.

Along came the most ubiquitous Tolkien-esque staple of a magical world. The sylvmaiden was tall, almost as tall as he was, and carried herself with the grace of a dancer. Framing her diamond shaped face with high cheekbones was mint green hair. She had pointed ears with a greenish tint at the edges.

Her skin's complexion was fair under the light of the luminescent flower bulbs and seemed to glow like she’d powdered it with crushed pearls. She had large almond shaped eyes, with irises that seemed to shift between hues of amber, turquoise, and aqua. Accentuating her delicate features was a pert nose with an almost chiselled bridge and a soft jawline.

Beyond that, she really looked good in her uniform. She wore a leaf green cuirass over a white tunic. Two leather arm sleeves that went all the way to her thumb, index, and middle fingers like billiard gloves. Most noticeable was the teardrop-shaped badge in a gold setting of wreathed leaves with green accents pinned to the left of her breast. The black and blue gem scintillated with an inner light, like a nebula trapped in a crystal.

If Arthur said so himself, the sylvmaid was rather alluring in the high waist breeches that hugged her slim profile. They were brown and completed the ensemble by being tucked into a pair of soft wraparound calf length boots. On her hip was a basket hilted sword whose knuckle guards looked like twisting vines.

And all that paled in comparison to her presence. It was like Aeskyre’s gravitas, but where the dragon inspired fear and awe, this sylvmaid had some sort of magnetic charisma that caught the eye. At a glance, he could tell there was something more to her; more than the inadvertent camaraderie and an impulsiveness to give himself to her wiles. To let himself succumb to his baser manly instincts―

Then he realised that the fuzzy feelings were not his own and cursed.

 

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