The deer, predictably, bolted. Marc and Sadie were both yelling something, but Danielle couldn’t parse anything but the voice in her ear, roughly demanding, “Sh-shut up – don’t make a-another sound!” It seemed like a boy, and he was dragging her back behind a tree. That won’t stop Marc, let alone Akari. She could feel him trembling – it would have been more encouraging, but one of the places she could feel it was in the blade pressed against her neck, quite possibly drawing blood already. She’d dropped her staff – he’d made sure of it, by the way he grabbed her.
Bows twanged in the distance, and he gasped and held his breath. The mana burst reached them – Danielle didn’t feel the urge to check her notices. “You don’t want to do this,” Danielle said in a low voice, hoping she could talk him down if he didn’t think she was just trying to give away their position. “I can feel how much you don’t want to do this. You also don’t need to do this.”
“Shut up!” he exclaimed, far too loud for hiding. Danielle flicked her eyes around, wondering if Sadie and Marc had run after the deer or towards her. She caught a mana source out of the corner of her eye and strained to see while her captor talked. “I do – I have to. I have to. I’m terrible at hunting, and I messed up my Class, nobody’s going to pay me to do stuff for them until I fix my Skills and I can’t fix my Skills until I level. I have to!”
“You don’t,” Danielle said. “You can level from animals, just like the guys over there are doing. You’re not a killer, that’s fine, you don’t have to be a murderer. You’d just get Outlawed anyway, can you even survive that? Let me go, and we’ll work out a way for you to level without doing this.”
“You don’t understand!” He said. “I, I can’t catch anything. My snares come up empty or disappear, I couldn’t even find any fishing gear, I have no idea how anyone’s fishing and anyway I stink at it even with all the stuff we take to the camping zone. I’m hopeless at hunting food. I gotta have Skills to do stuff people will trade food for, and right now I don’t. I have to level or I’m gonna starve, and my only chance is people that don’t have all their Skills in avoiding predators like animals do.”
“That’s not true,” Danielle said, striving for an even tone. “You just need some people to work with you on the fishing and stuff. My hunting party has a Healer, and we’ve managed to get her halfway to level 2 already – “
“Healers are in demand, crafters aren’t! Why am I even talking to you, you’re just trying to make me be the one who dies! W-well I’m not going to, I’m going to do this and level and – ” Danielle could feel him psyching himself up, tightening his grip.
Then Marc, Akari, and Sadie raced into view, coming from the same side of the thicket. They must have chased the deer first, and come back all together when they realized she wasn’t joining them on her own. “HEY! Let her go!” Marc shouted. Sadie simply drew her bow.
The guy behind her suddenly let go of her wrist, but immediately grabbed for something on his belt – his hatchet. Danielle barely had time to turn a few degrees – Was that Vince hiding behind the tree over there?? – before the hatchet blade was against her throat too and she had to freeze in place again.
Marc was approaching them, yelling “Do it and you’ll die before she hits the ground!” and the guy behind her was yelling “You can’t take this away from me, I need it!” and Danielle could feel him tensing and added a shout of her own: “God Almighty, help me!”
Suddenly, mana exploded out all around her in a pattern she’d never experienced before; not as powerful as Ranger Michael’s level 10 Skill, but quite possibly the next most powerful Skill she’d ever felt up close, and System text was filling her vision, and somehow it all seemed to be coming from her, but that was impossible. The knife and hatchet flew away, Marc was knocked backward, the guy behind her was knocked away, and the mana source that was possibly Vince the Wolf also flew backward a few feet, landing low, and rolling behind another tree. Sadie had lowered her bow and was staring, slack-jawed. Akari, right behind her, threw up her hands like an excited sports fan. What was that? was the only thought Danielle’s mind seemed able to contain.
System text was in the way of sight. She tried to focus on it.
- ? You have been touched by a power outside the system. Detecting changes.
That was a mind-boggling start.
- ? Trait: Mana Funnel applied. A channel has been made to deliver mana to your mana pool from the outside. This trait is permanent. Your mana absorption may increase by unknown amount.
That was – she didn’t know what that was. Unknown amount? Her eyes skipped down the list, looking for something that made sense.
- ? Skill: Shield Burst (T3) added at level 1.
A tier 3 Skill was – impossible. A Skill higher than her base level, which she’d never heard of, listed as added to her System, was not something that made sense. Neither was a message claiming she’d (somehow) received an impossible amount of mana, or one claiming to have used it to level up the impossible Skill.
- ? Organization status (Servants of the Creator) has been changed from “Silent Faithful” to “Wakeful Saint.”
She’d never heard of that org. How did she even have a status with an org she’d never heard of? She didn’t have time for this – the boy with the knife was still here somewhere – she didn’t know what was going on – she needed to clear her Interface and focus. She jumped to the bottom.
- ? You have been granted a system boon by a power higher than the system. Please put in a good word for us with them!
Danielle didn’t know how to process any of that.
“WHAT WAS THAT?!?” came a panicked shriek from behind her.
Danielle whipped around and found her assailant lying on the ground a few feet away, staring up at her in absolute shock, and possibly hyperventilating. It was a dark-skinned boy in a Sending uniform – of course in a Sending uniform, who out here had any other clothes? Danielle stared back at him, shock echoing through her own mind. What could she say? “I have been touched by a power outside the System,” she said, quoting the first line of the impossible messages.
“What??” shrieked the boy again.
“I second the WHAT?” shouted Sadie, behind her.
“Look, I – I don’t know! That’s just what it says! I think it was God answering my prayer?! You wouldn’t believe the System messages I’m looking at right now. It literally said I have been touched by a higher power than the System, and - and things!”
Danielle heard Akari say something low-voiced; she thought it was, “it really happened.”
“That’s impossible!” her assailant gasped. “What – what now?!”
“It’s clearly not impossible, I’ve got the System messages right here!” Danielle exclaimed. “So, I guess, well. God could’ve done, I mean, anything, He’s God! And he was already doing a miracle, so it could’ve been any miracle, but he chose this one, and all it really did was separate us? I think? He didn’t smite you dead, for example. So, um, in obedience to God’s example, I am also not going to smite you dead, as long as you stop attacking me – us! – and, and go away. OK? NO WAIT! Where did Vince go? He was right over there!”
Danielle turned towards the place she’d last seen maybe-Vince’s mana source, but he was gone. Either he had some stealth Skill that shielded him from her Skill, or he’d run away. Perhaps both.
“What? Vince? He didn’t come with me – are you sure he was there?”
“I knew it!” Marc said, standing up. “They’re baiting people into fighting so they can catch them with the Outlaw trait and go on a murder spree without the consequences! He told you killing Danielle was your ‘only way’ didn’t he?”
“W-well, um, yeah, kind of,” the boy on the ground stammered.
“Another good reason not to kill him, then,” Danielle said. “If we do, then Vince will be going after one of us!”
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“He was holding you at knife point, I think that’s hostile enough for Defender instead of Murderer,” Sadie declared in outrage.
“OK, yes, maybe it would have been, for me, a few minutes ago; but he’s not attacking now, and neither are we. Peace is restored. What’s your name, down there?”
“Jordan?” he answered uncertainly.
“OK, Jordan, can we count on you to maintain the peace here, so we can maybe work together on a less murderous solution to your problem?” Danielle asked.
The boy sputtered, “Wha- seriously? I’m supposed to believe you’re just going to help me now?”
Danielle spread her empty hands. “My religion tells us to forgive, my God just spared your life, and I literally have an organizational status for my religion with the word Saint in it. I like that status. I want to keep it. If you want to run straight back to the Rooms and lock yourself in, I won’t stop you, but my hunting party? We have a system for getting fish and taking turns killing them. It’s a pretty safe way to get food and mana, and it doesn’t take any Skills to manage it, so you can bank your pool mana for the day as mana tokens for the catalog, or into Payment Plan to save up for bonus Skills. If you’re willing to spend the time on doing it right, Jordan, then you can pay us back by using the Skill you’re so desperate for when you get it, right? What Skill is it, anyway?”
“Uh, Fiber Twisting, probably?” Jordan said.
“Joke’s on you, our party already has that!” Sadie said.
“Sadie, come on. His life is worth more than his one Skill,” Danielle said. “Why were you so desperate for that in particular, though?”
“I just need something I can actually use,” Jordan said. “I took Clean Bone and Carve Bone as my Class Skills, and nobody’s bringing large bones into camp at all – it’s all stinking rabbits, and – what’s so funny?” he demanded, because Danielle had started laughing, perhaps a bit hysterically.
“We just killed three deer, and I already have dibs on the bones,” she said. “Bone carving is the Skill I’m trying to learn! You want a deal where you get food for using your Skills? We’ll catch fish for you to kill, and you clean bones for me. You get the fish and the mana. Deal?”
Jordan stared at her in disbelief. “You mean it?”
“I really mean it,’ Danielle said, offering her hand to shake.
Jordan slowly stood and approached, giving Sadie cautious glances out of the corner of his eye, and finally shook her hand. “Deal, then,” he said.
“Excellent. Let’s go collect the deer and get back to the campfires,” Danielle said. “We’ve got a fish trap to make.”
The rest of the day went by in a sort of odd haze for Danielle. It wasn’t that she wasn’t actively engaged in all kinds of activity; she was. She helped skin the third deer, she made a fish trap in the river and baited it with shreds of venison trimmed from the cooking meat, she taught Jordan how to corner fish in the trap and kill them, she brain-tanned a deer hide in a hole full of water while Sadie did the same in a nearby hole, she ate fresh venison steaks and sliced cooked meat into thinner strips to continue drying as jerky. She sat stretching deer hide as it dried and chatting with people around the fire, while Jordan roasted fish on sticks beside her.
Jordan seemed to be in shock too. It didn’t stop him from catching and roasting half a dozen fish out of the trap, though. (Heather got two also, for reasons unknown; Danielle wasn’t sure why she bothered, with all the venison, and she wasn’t in a mood to question her about it.) He didn’t say much that wasn’t strictly relevant to the task in front of him. Sadie was likewise unusually quiet, which was saying something, since Sadie tended to be on the quiet side anyway.
Akari pulled Cassy aside when they came back into camp, and Danielle heard her say, “It really happened! I saw it! I can’t wait to tell you about it later!” They both seemed excited, but otherwise mostly normal for the rest of the day.
Danielle told the rest of the combined hunting party, “I found Jordan here in the woods in a state of desperation, and promised to teach him to fish without a rod and line. Don’t worry, he’s not getting in on the deer, he’s just going to put his fish on the edge of a fire and help me with some bone processing.” For some reason, everyone except Dana seemed to take that at face value and no one asked any awkward questions – not even the other people who had been out hunting the third deer, and really should have been able to hear some of the shouting. Danielle couldn’t explain it, but decided it was less strange than a System message reading, “You have been granted a system boon by a power higher than the system. Please put in a good word for us with them!”
She kept bringing up her System message log and re-reading that last line. It probably had something to do with the sense of unreality that persisted through most of the day.
Eventually, Danielle noticed that it was after 5pm. She checked in with her party to see how their mana was, both in their levels and in their pools, and if they’d all eaten their day’s purple tomatoes. Akari had snuck three purples tomatoes as snacks when her mana got low during the tracking, and intended to eat the other three after making a token at bedtime. She had gotten an assist on the third deer, but one of the boys from the mixed party had gotten the kill. Sadie had spent her mana down to zero using Purify Food and eaten her six mana tomatoes to recover. Heather had spent two mana and five points from a token healing people who nicked themselves with knives while cutting meat; neither wound had been serious and both patients had promised her five-point tokens the next day as payment. (Nathan had cleaned the wounds, and was getting the same payment.) Cassy had maxed out her mana pool and made a token. Everyone was past the halfway point on the road to level 2 now, which was exciting.
Cassy finally asked Danielle how her mana was after “all that Bubble of Silence and everything?” Danielle told her, “My mana pool is neither drained nor maxed, and my remaining mana to level on my Class is – hold on, I never actually checked the minimized message from the mana burst.” She had been ignoring the little blinking indicator all afternoon without even realizing it. She opened it and laughed. “40 mana and Hostility Sense! That’s what I got from the third deer! Twenty-three points left to Class level 2.”
Akari laughed with her; Sadie looked like the irony was just too much for her; Heather and Cassy just looked confused. “Were you even working on that one?” Heather asked.
“Not on purpose, but I was using Detect Mana Source to check for hostile people sneaking around in the woods, or lurking in the walkway, or what have you. Come to think of it, I was doing that kind of a lot. It makes sense,” Danielle said.
“It’s ironic for reasons we’ll discuss when we get home and have some privacy,” Akari said.
“Does it have anything to do with why Danielle’s been staring into space half the day?” Heather asked.
“I’m re-reading a System message I’m kind of – well, excited isn’t the right word – kind of blown away by,” Danielle said.
“Does it have something to do with the new guy?” Cassy asked.
“Obviously, but let’s talk about it later,” Danielle requested.
“He’s kind of, um, hovering,” Cassy said, pointing behind Danielle.
She turned to find Jordan shifting nervously from foot to foot. “I, um. I got eight fish and, um, I have eight mana,” he said. “Do you have eight bones you want cleaned? They, um, need to not be too big yet, or they’ll take more than one activation.”
“Yeah, I know what eight I want done,” Danielle said. “The Ranger’s Guide calls them ‘cannon bones’ – they’re the lower leg, kind of, right above the hooves and the littler bones down in there.” Danielle had been given a pile of roughly-stripped leg bones including half the hooves; they were awkwardly piled away from the fires, since she had specifically asked for them not to be cooked. She took Jordan over to look them over.
“I’ve heard of these, they’re supposed to be pretty good for smaller stuff,” he said. “Flatter than most. Wait, you got the shoulder blades too?”
“Most people here don’t want to deal with them,” Danielle said with a shrug. “You can probably make your own fish trap now, but I’ll be up for help cleaning the rest of these when we get back from our trip to the Access Point. I’ll be trying to do some the hard way, because I do still want to unlock the Skill for myself, but I want to get on with making some tools even more.”
“You know it’s going to be hard without the right chisels and stuff, right?” Jordan said. “I didn’t realize that in the Dome, I was planning to just use my knife.”
“We’ll probably have to learn to make stone chisels or something,” Danielle said. “Does your carving Skill help with that problem at all, or just lore-inform you that you need chisels?”
“It helps,” he said. “Some. More if I manage to level it.”
“You’ll need to get in on some of these group hunts,” Danielle said. “I’m sure this won’t be the last one. Probably not the last one this month, let alone this year.”
“I told you, I’m a lousy hunter. The ancestors whose bloodlines I’m supposed to be preserving are probably laughing their ectoplasm off at me,” he said morosely.
“Oh, ugh, does your family get harassed by the bloodline retention people? Akari’s family keeps threatening to sue them for actual legal harassment,” Danielle said.
“Akari’s the, um, Asian one?” he guessed.
“Oh, yeah, we didn’t really do introductions, did we?” Danielle said “Maybe we can do that on the way back. For now, these are my eight choices. Have at it.”
“Right, just a minute.” His eyes flicked as he operated his System interface, and the selected bones magically separated themselves from the shreds of hide. Connective tissue formerly attached to them simply disappeared, leaving the bones clean in Jordan’s hands. He passed them off, one at a time, to Danielle.
“Incredible,” Danielle said. “System Skills are really impressive sometimes, you know?” She held up the clean ivory bones.
Jordan laughed. “You think that’s amazing? After what you did this morning?”
“I didn’t do a thing this morning – it all happened without my input and then you were just on the ground,” Danielle said. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s a whole other level of incredible. I’m just still having trouble wrapping my mind around all of that.”
“What did the System messages say it was?” Jordan asked, almost whispering.
“A level 3 Skill called Shield Burst,” Danielle told him. “It’s added to my System, but it costs six points to activate.”
Jordan’s eyes widened. “You mean you can do it again?”
“Well, I haven’t tried yet – it’s higher than my base level, so I don’t know if it’ll work or if I’ll have to wait until I level up again,” Danielle admitted.
“It would take your whole mana production for the day, too,” Jordan said.
“Well, if I was level 1, and didn’t have any other relevant Skills or Traits, sure,” Danielle said. “I’m level 2 though, I could try it. I just haven’t.”
“You have the mana for it right now?” Jordan asked.
“Yeah, but it seems to knock things over, and I’m not sure of the range,” Danielle told him.
“You should go out in the river and use it,” Jordan told her seriously, “so you can properly see what it actually does.”
Gonzo is in this crowd!
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