Char wanted to rush over and explore the tree city like a kid let loose in a toy store, but she restrained herself. Declan was still limp and vacant-eyed on the ground, and there was no way in hell she was going to just leave him there.
She could feel something going on inside him. The new senses that came with having a Core let her pick out the tides of mana washing through him, though she couldn’t tell what they were doing. This new sense wasn’t like seeing or hearing. It was only vague impressions. She hoped it would get sharper with practice. Knowing when an opponent was moving mana around could be useful in a fight. Knowing what they were doing with it would be even better.
The maelstrom of power within Declan began to calm. Lulu perked up, and as the final swirls of power settled, she started licking his face. He sputtered and swatted at her as he returned to consciousness. “Gak! Lulu, enough. I’m OK.”
“How’d it go?” Char tried to examine him with her mana sense, but she only got the impression of a little star of power in his center.
“Absorbing the Shadow Domain Core kick-started the process, then there was a message about bloodlines, and those somehow increased the quality of my Core from Common to Rare.” He touched the center of his chest. “That feels so weird.” He shook his head. “Anyway, I’ve got a Duskweaver Core, which is, apparently, a Core specialized to increase the effectiveness of Shadow and Illusion magic.”
“Did it tell you what your bloodlines are?” Char asked.
“Yeah, I’ve got two: Huldufólk and Cait Sith. I don’t know what either of those is, but the gifts I got are called ‘Step Sideways’ and ‘Silent Stalker’. Hmm… I think I just…” Standing, he took a step to the right and vanished. To Char, it looked as if he stepped behind an invisible wall or through an invisible doorway.
She pushed herself to her feet and looked around. There was no sign of him. “Dec?” She turned in a slow circle, all of her senses alert, including her mana senses and her Wyrdsight, but there was no sign of him. “Holy crap. Is it invisibility?”
He stepped back into sight, and again, it didn’t appear like he’d faded, but like he’d stepped from behind something that she couldn’t see. His eyes were wide with wonder.
“I… that…” He took a deep breath and let it out. “There’s a whole other space. I could see what was happening here, but it was blurry, and there was no sound, like looking through glass brick. I could move around, and it felt like I could step back out wherever I wanted to. I think… I mean, I got the feeling that there was someplace in the other direction I could go to, but I’m not strong enough. Like that wasn’t a place in itself, but… a between. If that makes sense?” The words tumbled out in a rush, like he was in a hurry to pin down the experience before it got away.
Char’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s got a lot of possibilities. Does it let you pass through things, like locked doors?”
“I don’t know. I’ll have to do some testing. Not sure what Silent Stalker does, either. I picked a spell called Pierce Shadows. It’s basically night vision, but one of the advancement paths is a way to see through illusions, which, after that last fight, I really want.”
“I think that officially makes you the party rogue,” Char teased.
“What about you? Are you going to absorb that Rune Core?”
“I am, but I thought we’d take a look at that first.” She pointed to the tree, then watched his face as he followed her finger with his gaze and did a double-take when he saw the arboreal city.
“Is that…” His voice trailed off as his eyes darted from detail to detail, growing wider.
“I think so.” She started walking. “You gonna stand there catching flies, or come check it out?”
The tree dominated the end of the valley. Its boughs spread out so far they nearly touched the hills to either side. Its leaves were the size of serving trays. They were a deep, rich green on top, and a pale, almost silver-green on the underside. When the wind gusted strongly enough to ruffle them, they seemed to glint and sparkle as the underside caught the light.
The branches were thick and sturdy, branching out nearly horizontally to the trunk. They supported a network of platforms and rope bridges that ran from branch to branch, connecting the structures scattered through the canopy. The structures were rounded, built in a style Char was unfamiliar with, and that she suspected hadn’t been built by human hands.
She used Identify Plants on the tree and stopped walking to read the result:
Oonodong City Tree
Habitat: Non-Native
Alchemical Uses: unknown
The Oonodong people developed on a world with fierce ground hunters. Through centuries of careful horticulture, they developed massive City Trees to allow them to live in large communities without fear of the predators that stalked the forest floors of their home world. Even after those predators were hunted to near extinction, the tradition of living in City Trees persisted.
She’d never gotten that much information from Identify Plants before. The skill hadn’t leveled up, so the information had to have been added by the system. Was it because this was a Challenge reward, or because it was a Sanctuary, or some other reason? Why had the Aldevari brought this to Earth from another world? The tree added a whole new chapter to the collection of questions she needed answered.
The double doors at the base of the tree were grand things. They were made of some wood with bold swirls in the grain, and they looked like they’d been stained with berry juice, giving them a deep reddish-purple color. They had been inlaid with fine silver wire that followed the contours of the grain, emphasizing the natural beauty rather than overlaying it.
The handles were horizontal bars, and when she put her hand on one, she got a new message:
Welcome, Champion!
This Sanctuary is unclaimed.
Do you wish to claim it?
(Y/N)
(Ownership of a Sanctuary can be transferred at the City Hub.)
She chose ‘yes.’ Immediately, mana washed through her, and she felt a connection form. When she examined that connection, she realized that she now knew how much land was covered by the Sanctuary—the whole valley; had a general idea of the health of the city—the structures were all in perfect condition, and the population was zero; and knew that there were no threats in the valley.
It took her a moment to sort through the information being fed to her by the City Tree. To Declan, it must have looked like she’d just frozen and zoned out. He put a hand on her shoulder and called her name. She shook herself and pulled her mind away from that thread of data.
“I’m OK. You were right, Dec. The place is move-in ready. It’s a pre-made city, just add refugees.” She looked up along the trunk toward the obscured sky. “I just wish I knew what the catch is going to be, because there has to be one.”
“It might be just what it seems.” The optimism in his words wasn’t quite carried by his tone, as if he was struggling to believe his own words. “I mean, the Aldevari don’t want to kill us all. They want us to prove ourselves, to get stronger. Even if you take the most cynical view of what they’ve done… Well, even fighting dogs need a kennel. If they need us for something, then they need enough of us to survive and keep the species going.” He looked up at the shops and houses in the branches above. “It’s not like we’ve got any better options, anyway.”
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Char nodded. He was right. Hidden cost or not, this was the best chance most of the other survivors they’d met would have to keep surviving. She turned the handle and pulled the heavy door open.
The doors opened into a vast open space; a city block’s worth of real estate. The inside of the tree was hollow, and the ground floor was laid out like a market square. Swirling veins of crystal inlaid into the wood glowed with light to illuminate the space. At the back of the space, opposite the doors, a double set of staircases wound away from one another and spiraled around the interior walls to a second floor about twenty feet above. Vines with glowing flowers twined around the banisters and hung from the floor above. Around the perimeter of the space, nestled against the walls of the hollow trunk, were vacant market stalls, just waiting for merchants to move in.
In the center of the plaza was a softly glowing blue orb. Lines and sparks of purples and greens seemed to move within a glass-like shell, reminding her a bit of an old screensaver she’d seen when she was a kid. The orb was about twice the size of a basketball and was floating three feet off the ground. Surrounding it were four short stone columns, each one topped with a silver sphere the size of a softball. Char and Declan crossed the plaza to them. The stone columns held the spheres at just the right height to place a hand on them.
Char was cautious. She walked around the orb and its satellites. Was this the Hub the message had mentioned? Were those some sort of access points? Was it safe to touch them? Her thoughts were interrupted by a cry from Declan.
“Oh, hey! There’s a store! I knew all these credits we’ve been getting had to be good for something.” Declan had his right hand on one of the silver orbs. A holographic screen floated above the orb, and words flickered across it. “It’s asking me if I want to apply to become a resident.”
Char sighed. So much for being careful. Since Declan wasn’t melting or anything, she stepped up to one of the spheres and lifted a hand. Pausing, she looked around. Lulu was sniffing around one of the merchant stalls and seemed unconcerned about any danger. She sent Lulu a series of images that she hoped the dog would understand, trying to convey the idea of knocking her and Declan away from the orbs if anything bad started happening. Lulu seemed to understand, so Char put her hand on the silver sphere. She felt the tickle of mana against her palm, and a screen appeared, floating over the sphere.
Welcome, Champion!
STORE
AUCTION
QUEST BOARD
MESSAGE BOARD
TRAVEL
CITY MENU
The screen that floated before her had a style and font that were completely different from the screens that showed up in her HUD. Her heart started to race when she saw the TRAVEL option, but it was grayed out and wouldn’t respond when she tried to select it. The store was disappointing. It had basic resources like iron and leather, basic rations, and basic gear. The rations were cheap, only a copper each. That was a relief. If they could get the others to come back here, they’d at least have access to food.
The auction, quest board, and message board were all empty, but there was an option to post in each of them. Out of curiosity, she selected the option to post a quest. It would let her add the details of the request, the reward, set a time limit, and even toggle whether it was a personal quest from her or sponsored by the city. She cancelled the quest without posting it and moved on.
The City Menu was where the interesting stuff was. There was one resident request pending, from Declan, of course. She opened it, chuckled at his vastly inflated curriculum vitae, and said, “I should deny this on the basis of fraud and misrepresentation. I happen to know that you have not, in fact, slain a dragon, nor were you instrumental in the destruction of the Death Star. Shame on you, lying on an official form.” She accepted it anyway, ignoring his snickers of amusement.
Most of the options in the City Menu were grayed out, but there were ways to see city resources, population, morale, defenses, military, law enforcement, diplomacy, and all the other things that made her hate city simulator games. She wondered if she could keep control of the city and put a council in charge to handle the boring stuff.
There was no way she was going to be able to face down the Aldevari Dominion on her own, no matter what level she got to. One person, no matter how much personal power they represented, couldn’t do everything. She was going to need an army, and that meant logistics and support, and that meant civilization. There was going to be a great deal of work to do to get to that point, and she couldn’t keep running off like a loner hero in a fantasy novel.
If she was serious about throwing off the Dominion and getting Humanity back its own self-determination, she was going to have to step up and take some responsibility. She’d walked away from the group at the mercado because she didn’t want to be responsible for other people’s lives, but she needed to put on her big-girl pants and get over it. It wasn’t about what she wanted or didn’t want. It was about what the people around her needed.
She still wanted to find her family, but she’d accepted that running off half-cocked wasn’t the way to do that. Building up a community and unlocking that travel option, connecting with other Sanctuaries, might be. Her mind wandered over possibilities and vague, half-formed plans as she poked through the various options and reports.
When she finally pulled herself away from the screen, she realized that she had a couple of new notifications waiting to be read, and Declan was standing next to her, waiting expectantly.
“We’re going to bring everyone back here, right?” His eyes searched her face, watching for her reaction.
She smiled. “Yeah. I’m not that big an asshole. Food, safety, civilization. After the past week, I’ll admit, it feels too good to be true. But you were right when you said it was better than any other option we’ve got.” She looked up at the glowing flowers and swirling crystal inlays, and added, “Besides, this is too awesome to keep all to ourselves. Come on, let’s see what’s upstairs.”
They took a couple of hours to explore the arboreal city. The second floor held civic spaces and a small amphitheater, and there were another ten floors above that of apartments and public spaces. The branches held more living spaces, but also workshops and stores. Some of the workshops had lifts meant for raising and lowering materials from the ground. They even found that a couple of the largest roots had hollow spaces set up for stables and kennels.
The stairs had been uncomfortable to climb. The risers were set an inch or so too high for human comfort. It was a small thing, but over multiple flights of stairs, it added up. The counters and benches were also just a tiny bit too high. Not unusably so, but enough to be a constant reminder that this wasn’t a human city; that it had been built by other hands and intended to house other people. It made Char wonder how many races the Aldevari had done this to.
After wandering the city and poking into its nooks and crannies for a while, Char returned to a room on the second floor that she’d labeled the ‘Mayor’s Office’ in her head. It was one of the few rooms with a real window, open to the outside. There was a small balcony, just large enough for two people to stand on and admire the view out over the valley. Inside the room was another of the stone columns with the silver sphere for accessing the City Hub. It made sense for an administrator to be able to access it without having to go down to the plaza every time.
Declan wanted to explore some more, and she told him to go on. Lulu could watch over her while she absorbed her third Core. She sat down against the wall opposite the balcony and crossed her legs. She pulled the Rune Affinity Core from her inventory, but before she absorbed it, she checked the notifications that had been waiting for her since she’d claimed the Sanctuary.
Congratulations!
By claiming a Sanctuary, you have become a shepherd to your people.
You have the power to protect or exile, to create, or to become
an engine of conquest.
The Sanctuary will be protected against hostile incursions for
one Lunar cycle (28 days) from the moment it was claimed.
Use this time wisely to strengthen your people.
There are many Challenges to come.
—————————————————
New Title:
First Shepherd (Unique)
You are the first on your world to claim a
Sanctuary. Lead your people well, Shepherd.
+5 Intelligence, +5 Resilience, +5 Willpower
+5% effectiveness of Intelligence, Resilience, and Willpower
—————————————————
Threshold reached:
Your Willpower has reached an effective score of 100.
You have taken the first step toward D rank.
You have gained a Feat:
Iron Will - Mental and emotional attacks will have a reduced effect if they try to sway you from your chosen course.
The grace period lifted a weight from her shoulders. There would be time for the people she brought here to build things up before they had to worry about attacks. This city had all of the living and working spaces they would need, but there were no tools, no weapons, and very little in the way of defenses.
The title was also a nice boost, especially since it tipped her Willpower over the 100 mark, but she hated the wording. She wasn’t a shepherd, and humans weren’t sheep. That choice of wording said something about the way the Aldevari thought, though, and it made her even more determined to pry their hands off the rudder of Humanity’s destiny.
She’d need strength for that. Rune wasn’t an affinity she would have chosen for herself, but every level that passed with empty affinity slots was lost stats. She couldn’t afford to pass up new abilities and more stats per level, waiting for the perfect Core to fall into her hands. She wasn’t sure what sort of spells she’d get from a Rune affinity, but the swirling sigils within the crystal orb made her think it might have to do with language or knowledge.
Odin hung himself from Yggdrasil for nine days as a sacrifice to himself for the knowledge of runes and the wisdom to use them. It was fitting that she was sitting in a giant tree as she absorbed this Core. She only hoped she’d gain a little wisdom, too. She’d need all the help she could get.
