Volume 1, Chapter 10: The Scenic Route Was a Mistake (Patreon)

The moment the transmission ended, I focused on the Daimon inside my head, briefly ignoring Brigid as she drifted toward me, either frightened or excited.

I could clearly sense that the objective of the secondary task lay in roughly the same direction as the mesa, so at least the creators of this little game had made things easier for me in that regard. Still, I wanted details—whatever they might be—and with that thought, I addressed the device.

[Secondary Task: Locate Frogflower.]

“This is fucking bullshit!” I shouted with all the strength in my lungs, which amounted to little more than a slightly raised voice and a painful scraping in my throat that I immediately regretted. “Bri,” I said with considerable more respect for silence while turning to my fireball. “Do you have access to the details of that secondary task the Oracle mentioned?”

“Yes, I’m, um… checking what I’m allowed to know.”

“Where did they even put the crystal in you?” I asked, trying to draw out more information in the process.

[Additional information regarding the secondary task is locked.]

“In the center of my, um, flame, there’s something Molbob called my… firecore. That’s where they placed the, um, crystal.” The flames across her cheeks turned a strangely deeper shade of red.

“My Daimon doesn’t have any more details. Maybe, um, we have to find the flower first before we learn what we’re supposed to do with it?”

“Or finding it might be enough,” I replied, focusing on the essence within me.

[Current estimated balance: 206 Standardized Essence of Authority Units. Total Earned: 206 Standardized Essence of Authority Units.]

By itself, without any point of comparison to the cost of improving my existing abilities or advancing to a higher level, the number meant nothing to me. I did not even know what a standard unit was or how significant an improvement to a spell it represented, but at least I now had a number to enter into the conceptual table summarizing my soul’s accomplishments.

“I don’t have any, um, Achievement Points,” Bri said, turning toward me with the corners of her mouth drooping. “Not even one!”

“Neither do I,” I replied after consulting my Daimon, which displayed a perfectly round zero. “How much essence do you have?”

“Twenty-two standard units. Is that a lot?”

“Twenty-two!? I have two hundred and six, and I have no idea whether that’s a lot or a little and how I got as much. It’s also getting harder for me to talk, Bri. Water is my priority,” I replied, pushing myself up from my knees to survey the area once more.

As far as the eye could see, the river of sand cut across the landscape. I wanted to reach the other side—and quickly, before the approaching sandstorm caught up with us—and to do that I needed to find some way across.

At roughly thirty feet wide at its narrowest and, by my estimate, almost twice that at its broadest point that sand river dispelled any fantasy of laying a tree trunk across it.

Where we stood, the rocky banks dropped about six feet to the river below. Farther upstream, however, the drop became shallower, and the stone teeth jutting from the current stood close enough together that I might have a chance of jumping across them.

“We’re going there.” I pointed the spot out to Bri. “There’s no time to look for another crossing.”

“That doesn’t look very, um… safe, Lex. The sand is flowing between those… rocks really, well, fast, don’t you think?” she replied.

This time, however, I set the pace and led the way, squeezing between the larger boulders and avoiding those heated by the sun.

The air practically sizzled with heat.

“Let’s look for another crossing. This, um… doesn’t look safe,” Bri continued.

“Are you afraid you’ll fall?” I replied, vaulting over a waist-high boulder blocking the path by planting one hand flat against it and swinging my legs to the other side.

The movement sent the bag on my shoulder lurching and briefly threw me off balance when I landed, as everything inside shifted to one side.

“No, um… I’m afraid you’ll fall… and that I’ll be left alone.”

The wind began blowing harder, pelting us with fine grains of sand. I looked back at her as she flew over the same obstacle, by which point I had already moved a short distance ahead.

For the first time, I noticed that the movement of the air affected her, pushing her backward.

“What’s happening, Bri? Is the wind suddenly giving you trouble?”

“Too much sand. It’s not the gust itself, but the particles hitting me. I think… yes, it’s probably them pushing against me, mhm,” she replied, ending with a purr. “Don’t change the subject, you! You nearly lost your balance just a moment ago!” she protested, both verbally and with her expression.

“Don’t worry. I have experience walking along edges. The Daimon even offered me Acrobat and Escape Artist as possible Paths—and with the benefit of what has already been a considerable amount of hindsight, perhaps one of them would have been the better choice.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out two of the crumpled ties. After hiding my crowbar into the bag and shifting it behind me so that it rested against my butt, I knotted the ties together into a single longer cord. Then I wrapped it around my waist, just above where the bag joined its straps. Once I tied the makeshift rope at the front, the entire thing sat firmly behind me without throwing off my balance.

I tested it by hopping from one foot to the other, then lunging forward and sideways several times.

“See? Secured. I was offered Tinkerer too,” I added with a sigh, which immediately triggered a fit of dry coughing.

Bri, of course, drifted closer in concern, but bent double and pounding one fist against my chest to help clear my throat, I held my other hand out toward her, palm open, to stop her approach. It was already hot enough without her hovering nearby.

“All right, um, if you have to be so stubborn, then at least let me fly across first and make sure it’s safe, okay?” Her eyes widened, and hot black smoke burst from her nose.

“Bri…” I drawled, but lacking the strength to explain that our methods of movement differed considerably, I leaned forward slightly, swept one arm outward, and bowed toward the nearby rocks cutting across the river of sand. “The way is yours, my dear.” I coughed again, covering my mouth with a closed fist. “Please be careful. You’re my only companion,” I added, trying to encourage her, while silently noting that without her, I would also have no light in the darkness, possibly no warmth if the deep night surrounded me with cold air, and no convenient source of flame for Pyrography. At that moment, however, more than anything else she could offer me, I needed water. I had no intention of giving up simply because this strange little creature depended on me—or, at the very least, was counting on me. If I died of dehydration, I would be condemning her to solitude just as surely as if I fell during the crossing.

She watched me for a long moment, then swallowed her equivalent of saliva, narrowed her coal-black eyes, and turned toward the rocks.

The first one, nearest our side of the river, was tall and sharp, though it widened closer to the bottom, leaving enough room to plant one’s feet. She should be able to fly past it without much difficulty, I analyzed silently.

As it quickly turned out, none of that mattered.

Even while battered by heated dust and sand thrown into the air by the wind, Brigid simply flew over the rocks and the flowing sand beneath them, flattening herself several times—first horizontally, then vertically—to slip through the narrowest gaps and over the splits in the rock formations.

Once she reached the other side, she turned toward me. Her expression remained unchanged, showing what could only have been concentration mixed with concern.

“It wasn’t, um… that bad! You can do it, Lex!” she shouted.

Her voice barely carried over the wind and the roar of the sandy current. The former was clearly troubling her more with every passing moment, because she lowered herself and took shelter behind a large boulder on the opposite bank.

Without delay, I approached the first tall rock and grabbed its sharp tip. I placed one foot firmly, checking for balance, then the other, on a rocky ledge shielded from the sandy current by the stone itself.

My socks offered miserable protection, and I could feel clouds of heated, soft sand striking my feet. The air, however, was becoming slightly cooler, while a large stretch of land to our right fell into shadow beneath the enormous sandstorm drawing closer.

With no time to waste, I began swinging by my arms, digging my fingers desperately into hollows in the rock to support my weight. When the moment felt right, I let go and landed on a small, flat stone about three feet away, across which the current hurled clouds of dust.

I immediately felt the force trying to knock me down and carry me away, but by flailing my arms and leaning forward, I managed to regain my footing.

I did not straighten up right away. Instead, I crouched lower, reached for the first sock clinging to my foot, and pulled it off. Once I was certain the movement would not disturb my precarious position, I repeated the process with the other foot and threw both socks into the rushing river.

Despite all the sand and dirt that had collected in and around them, I had to say goodbye. On the rocks, they simply made my feet too slippery.

Feeling a surge of heat strike and burn the fronts of my feet, I shifted my weight by arching them and balancing only on my toes. Then, in one quick, fluid motion, I planted both feet flat again, crouched, and launched myself forward with one leg extended and both hands reaching for the next spike jutting from the riverbed.

I caught it, braced myself with the extended leg, and quickly brought the other one forward, searching for footholds in the stone’s hollows. At the same time, I kept shifting my hands rapidly from one position to another, allowing myself to move along the rock while avoiding holding any one heated spot for too long.

Even so, both my feet and hands were already nearing their limits.

I was slowly beginning to hate heat, which, considering both my Path and my traveling companion, did not bode well for my future or my sanity. Assuming, of course, that after years of brutal training, theft, deception, planning and executing heists, and attempting to maintain some semblance of a normal life throughout it all, anyone could claim I had ever been entirely sane to begin with. I wondered if that might be the requirement for one to become what was necessary to follow a Path.

“Just a little farther!” Bri shouted, and thanks to her proximity, her voice cut easily through the chaos of nature around us.

At that same moment, one of the strange mice I had seen earlier burst from the sand thrown up by the river. It landed on the rock beside my foot and sank its teeth into my little toe.

I howled in pain as its tiny teeth drew blood, then kicked hard, throwing it off and sending it tumbling back toward the river. That was when I noticed that although its tail was clearly covered in fur, it ended in a long, flat fin. Its front and hind limbs looked more like flippers as well, with membranes stretched between elongated fingers and arms shortened almost to nothing.

“Fuck,” I muttered as I reached the edge of the space where I could still plant my feet.

The rock leaned toward the opposite side of the river, so I pushed off the wall with my legs and, clinging to it with nothing but my fingers, swung like a pendulum. At the farthest point of the arc, I released my grip, twisted through the air like a corkscrew, and landed against another black stone tooth jutting from the current.

My hands quickly found holds, but one slipped free. For a brief moment, I hung suspended by a single arm stretched to the limit of its strength.

I quickly spotted the nearest rocky ledge rising above the sand thrown through the air by the river. Swinging from that one arm, I let go and dropped toward it.

“Bloody hell!” I shouted as my bare foot discovered what it felt like to land on a sharp spike of stone. A moment later, I felt warm blood running from the wound.

I slowly crouched, placing both hands against the relatively small and supposedly flat—though clearly not flat enough—rock. Shifting my weight onto my right foot, I reached for my left and began carefully lifting it from the spike that had pierced almost all the way through.

The pain was immense, but little by little, fighting against the strengthening wind and the river’s current as it hurled clouds of sand and dust into me, I managed to pull my foot free and lower it carefully onto the hot surface.

I rose cautiously onto both legs and looked toward Bri. She hovered only four feet away on the opposite bank, biting her lip.

Drawing a deep breath, I jumped toward her one final time.

Pain paralyzed my injured foot at the moment I pushed off, preventing me from gaining enough leverage. I knew immediately that I had not jumped far enough. I felt my ankle buckle beneath my weight in a way I did not like, but by then, there was no stopping my momentum.

I reached the opposite bank, but landed on its very edge and lost my balance. The bag strapped behind me pulled me backward, and even with my arms spinning like windmills, I could not recover.

I fell back toward the raging river.

“No!” Bri screamed, flying toward me.

I caught only a glimpse of her from the corner of my eye, but it was enough to force one last effort from my soul. I covered the skin of one hand with Cinderhide and grabbed the fiery hand extending from the bottom of her body.

The sudden support was enough, even though I dragged her downward with me.

I bent my body forward, released her hand, and tumbled across the rocks toward safety. While still rolling, I ended the transformation covering my arm and cursed every uneven stone I struck along the way.

I lifted my head for only a moment and saw Brigid flying toward me.

Then my Psyche switched off every light.