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This Used to be About Dungeons, ch 83, Oeyr's Hand
🕑 Added 2022-03-02 16:33:08 +0000 UTCAlso Worth the Candle: Book 1 is now available as an ebook! Hooray!
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Mizuki visited the temple clerics, who were thankfully having a slow day.
“I’ve never really understood why Oeyr got healing,” Mizuki said to Lin as the cleric checked her over. The wound on her leg had been healed by Hannah, but the wounds from the fall had been extensive enough that a cleric of Oeyr was needed. The criss-cross cuts on Mizuki’s forehead in particular had been something that Garos wouldn’t touch.
“You daydream during the sermons,” said Lin with a small grunt. He was on the older side, but a grunt like that made him seem ancient. “There’s always a question about what to do with the ones like you. Words can’t reach the minds of those who don’t listen.”
“Sorry,” said Mizuki, though she didn’t feel particularly abashed. “I mean, I do listen sometimes, but I don’t remember the healing sermon, if you did one.”
“I do one every year,” said Lin. “It’s a staple.”
“And?” asked Mizuki. “Is there a short version?”
“Healing is an emergent property of the body,” said Lin. “That’s about it, truth be told, the rest is just giving examples.” Mizuki had stripped down for the clerical inspection, and was trying not to be self-conscious about it, but Lin was poking and prodding. “You certainly took a fall, if this is where Hannah got you back to.”
“Do you have examples?” asked Mizuki.
Lin scoffed. “As I said, the sermon I give once a year is mostly examples, so yes, I have them. But if it will bring you closer to Oeyr, then the best example as it relates to the body is the clotting of the blood. When blood sits outside the body, it clots, coagulates, and we can think of this as a simple rule.” He paused in the rote recitation and gave a thoughtful look. “Though with the way things are, it’s likely to be the result of a set of deeper rules.” He shook his head. “This same ‘rule’ is what causes your wounds to seal on their own, if they’re small enough, and there are people whose bodies do not follow that rule, whose blood does not clot. Oeyr is not about these rules, but about what emerges as a consequence of them, especially the unexpected or unintuitive behaviors, though of course emergence encompasses even that which is mundane.”
“Huh,” said Mizuki. “Okay.”
“I can see that the lesson is not taking,” said Lin with a sigh. “Tell me, when you break a bone, how does it heal?”
“Um,” said Mizuki. “I’m guessing the answer you want isn’t ‘a cleric heals it’.”
“I mean naturally,” said Lin.
“Bones heal naturally?” asked Mizuki. “Is that true?”
Lin sighed. “The body can heal itself back to what it was in many more circumstances than people believe,” he said. “When a bone breaks, first there’s a clot, and later a callus. The callus starts soft and gets harder, and then there will be a lump of bone around the break, which will gradually get narrowed down to what the bone originally was.” These were, to Mizuki, just words.
“Um,” said Mizuki. “Okay?” All the healing was done, and now this was just a chat with a cleric, but Mizuki found herself wanting to understand, maybe because Lin seemed to think that it was simple. “But how do you know that’s a rule, rather than anything else? Other than your god, I mean.”
“We can see what happens when the rules go wrong, or when they’re missing, or when they apply to things they were never meant for,” said Lin. “The body only has a limited capacity to ‘know’, most of it is a set of simple rules, and those rules are revealed to us in their misapplications — in what emerges.”
Mizuki frowned. “So you’re just … speeding up the rules?”
Lin frowned. “In a sense. And there are limits to what we can do, more stringent limits than most people seem to believe. The body uses resources in the course of the application of these rules, and we don’t even have names for all those resources, let alone a way to replenish them. There are rules that govern the way things break down, rules that govern how vital reagents are transformed into the stuff our body actually uses.”
“Hrm,” said Mizuki. She touched her forehead, where the wound that Hannah hadn’t been able to heal had been. It had bled quite a bit, and now there was a scar there.
“The sermon on healing is coming up,” said Lin. “Another few weeks, I would wager. You’ll still be in town?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” asked Mizuki.
“You’re a dungeoneer, aren’t you?” asked Lin. “They don’t have a tendency to stick around.”
“Ah,” said Mizuki. “Well, I don’t know. I think we were going to step up the dungeons, but it will be a while before we need to relocate.” She shrugged.
“And the house?” asked Lin. “If you’ll be selling it, I know a few interested buyers. It’s a unique place. Better to get moving on it quickly, if you can.”
“I … hadn’t thought about that,” said Mizuki. “Thanks.”
“If you want the scar removed, you’ll need Obbrech,” said Lin. He took some holy oil and put it on her hands, cleansing them. “He’s in, I think. I know the young sometimes fancy their scars. For what it’s worth, I don’t think it’s terribly fetching.”
“Thank you,” said Mizuki with a curtsey.
Obbrech was the cleric of Bixzotl, God of Copies, and when Mizuki got to his part of the church, he saw that he was in conversation with Lilla, a girl who had been two years above Mizuki. She’d had a failed marriage the year before, and by the way the conversation was going, she was on the prowl. Both of them were standing, and it seemed like Obbrech was trying to get her to leave, at least by his body language. She was using her fingers to twirl her hair, and her chest was forward, on display like a hen. When Obbrech spotted Mizuki, he seemed relieved, and said his goodbyes to Lilla.
“What can I do for you, Mizuki?” asked Obbrech. She was surprised that he knew her name. He was attractive, and Mizuki could see the appeal of his sandy hair and dimpled cheeks. He had a kind face and slightly tanned skin, a suggestion of blended parentage or possibly just more time working outdoors than a cleric normally got.
“Forehead,” said Mizuki, pointing at the scar. “As Lin said, it’s not ‘fetching’, though I haven’t looked in a mirror to confirm.”
Obbrech examined it, and Mizuki tried not to look at his face as he leaned in. He had very white, very straight teeth with slightly outsized canines. “Would you like it moved?”
“Moved?” asked Mizuki.
“To a more fetching place,” said Obbrech. He smiled at her. “The key to a good looking scar, in my opinion, is a bit of asymmetry, though I’m sure Hannah would disagree. A good scar draws attention to your best features, like an accent. Odd, in a good way.” He leaned back a bit, evaluating her face. “There, by your eyebrow, to draw attention to your eyes? Or on a cheek?”
“No,” said Mizuki. She could feel the heat rising in her cheeks. “Just remove it, please.”
“Very well,” said Obbrech. “I’m going to touch your head, is that okay?”
Mizuki nodded. He had long, slender fingers, but there were surprising callouses there. The alteration was over in a moment, and Mizuki’s fingers went to where the scar had been. It was completely gone, leaving flat, smooth skin.
“Huh,” she said. “I’ve never had Bixzotl’s healing before, I don’t think.”
“It’s not really healing,” said Obbrech with a shrug. “You weren’t hurt, it was cosmetic. And technically it was just cloning one part of the skin into the other part.”
“Still,” said Mizuki. “Thanks, now I don’t have to walk around with a dorky scar.” She beamed at him, and she saw his smile falter. “Sorry, was it something I said?”
“No, no,” said Obbrech. “But if that’s all, I should be going.”
“Sure,” shrugged Mizuki. He was being weird, and Mizuki didn’t really understand it. “I wasn’t, um.”
Obbrech raised an eyebrow.
“Nothing,” said Mizuki. “Just, Hannah had said that you got kind of annoyed by all the girls, and I didn’t want to, ah — nope, it’s dumb, nevermind.”
“Mmm,” said Obbrech, but some of his displeasure had left him. “I’ll have to speak with Hannah and see what she’s been saying.”
“Just that you’re young and handsome, and that your time gets eaten up by, well, Lilla and the others,” said Mizuki. “And I — that’s not me. That’s all I wanted to say.” She was feeling a hotness in her chest. She’d said too much, too quickly, and gave a little curtsey, bowing out and leaving to a stammering and awkward goodbye from him.
Mizuki needed a long bath. She’d gone into the garden stone and washed up there, but that had only a tub of lukewarm water and a set of spare clothes, very welcome but inadequate in the face of the muck she’d rolled through. She faintly stunk of it, but she hoped that she had been clean enough not to be offensive to the clerics in the temple. Every now and then, when she turned her head, she caught a whiff of it, a dank and musty scent.
Everyone else had gone ahead to the house, at her insistence. They’d set out late in the day, at least by their usual standards, and had come back so late that dinner wouldn’t start until after dark, maybe long after dark if she got her wished-for shower in.
But when she got home, she smelled food, and a brief glance into the kitchen was enough to confirm that Hannah and Isra were doing something in there. It smelled good.
“I’m going to shower,” said Mizuki.
“Go, shower,” said Hannah, who was handling dough. “We’ve got it well in hand.” She didn’t say what was well in hand, but Mizuki figured that could be a surprise.
Alfric was stepping out of the bathroom when Mizuki came up. He was in a clean shirt and pants, but they were both loose, not yet tucked in or buckled. He saw her once he stopped toweling his head and grinned.
“I don’t think there’s anything better than getting clean after a dungeon,” said Alfric.
“Let’s hope,” said Mizuki.
When she was in the shower, she was surprised by how much grime and dirt there was still left on her. Dried blood had found a few places to hide on her, and when she washed it away, it briefly turned the water pink before slipping down the drain. There were black flecks of something in her hair, and they seemed to be in endless supply, each scrub of her head producing more of them, which followed the pink water down the drain. She had never thought of it before, but with five people in the house, and with the intensive showers following a dungeon, they would probably have to muck out the desiccation chamber in the basement more often.
The shower went long, as her showers sometimes did, and eventually she was sitting there beneath the hot water with her head resting against the blue and white ceramic tiles as the water ran down her body.
She was thinking about being down in the bottom of the pit. More specifically, she was thinking about the second fireball, the one that had felt necessary to finish the creature off. She wasn’t really sure how she’d done it, given that she hadn’t held anything back the first time. She had seen some of the movements of the creature after that first hit as her eyes adjusted back down to the dim light of her miniature lantern, and she had just tried to mimic what Verity did. That shouldn’t have been possible, or Mizuki had never heard about it happening, but it had felt like she’d expanded her own range, sucking in more aether for a second strike.
<Dinner is ready,> said Hannah.
Mizuki reluctantly shut off the water, then toweled off and went to her room to find something to wear. Tomorrow was going to have to be laundry day, but she wasn’t going to do anything else with her time, so she slipped on the robe she usually wore in the morning.
Dinner was already laid out, some kind of open-faced sandwich, a relatively flat bread with all kinds of things piled on top of it.
“Long shower,” said Hannah.
“Sorry,” sighed Mizuki. “I’m just feeling a little worn.”
“You took a tumble,” said Alfric. “I’m just glad you’re okay.”
“You’d be battered and bruised tomorrow, if not for the clerics,” said Hannah.
“To the clerics,” said Mizuki raising a glass of wine that had been poured for her. There was less enthusiasm in her voice than she wished there was.
They ate in silence for a bit. It was a good meal, which Mizuki thought was mostly down to the crust they’d managed to put onto the top of everything and the way the melted cheese lent it some creaminess. There was no great design to it, just a good blend of things, like honey, fresh herbs, small chunks of meat, and some kind of creamy sauce that Mizuki thought Hannah was to thank for.
“I’ll contact the authorities in the morning,” said Alfric. He cleared his throat and pushed his empty plate forward. He’d been the first to finish, as he often was. “I know I didn’t really explain what the thing in the cave was, and I can do that now, if that’s okay.”
Mizuki nodded. She was curious, but also feeling like she needed a nap, or just to go early to bed, and like any explanation might roll right off her. She’d had so much energy nearly the whole way through the dungeon, but after she was out, she’d deflated.
“There was a huge civilization before our time,” said Alfric. “They used to call them giants, but that was just because of the size of the things they built, the scales they did things on. It was so large that it was hard to conceive of otherwise. They were humans though. The dungeons are the work of the Editors, but the stones with runes around them, those are the work of those people. Same with the giant stone on Mizuki’s land.”
“What happened to these people?” asked Isra. She was very interested, leaning forward, her food half-forgotten.
“We don’t know,” said Alfric.
“The Hand of Oeyr,” said Hannah.
“Hard to say,” shrugged Alfric, not quite disagreeing. “Their civilization fell apart into smaller, lesser pieces for some reason.” He eyed Hannah. “Reasonable people can disagree on what really happened.”
“I don’t understand what ‘the Hand of Oeyr’ would even mean,” said Isra.
“You get your food from the woods,” said Hannah. “Some people are a step removed, they get their food from you, and some people are two steps removed, they get their food from someone who got their food from you. Could be any number of people involved in that, hundreds of people, and there are all kinds of other things, like buildin’ houses or gettin’ ectads, there’s really no limit to how complicated it can all get. And a complicated system can get so complicated that no one really understands how it works, and if somethin’ goes wrong, it can just,” she made a motion with her hands like she was snapping a branch.
“Could that happen to us?” asked Mizuki. She was feeling a little more awake now, but some of that was alarm at the prospect of everything falling apart.
“No,” said Alfric. “Or, probably not. We don’t have enormous systems, especially not out in Pucklechurch. If the whole hex were severed from the rest of the world, it would be self-sufficient. A place like Dondrian is more vulnerable to things that are in the region of Oeyr’s Hand, but it’s not like it’s an unknown thing that could come from nowhere. A lot of the national budget goes toward system insulation.”
“Plus we live in an age of clerical unity,” said Hannah. “And we have chrononauts. And the Editors have made a lot of changes in all that time, some of which seem like they’re probably aimed at havin’ better systems, though it’s hard to say why they do things, and harder still to say whether they’re meetin’ their goals.”
“So we don’t need to worry about this … collapse?” asked Isra.
“You especially,” said Alfric.
“What were the stones then?” asked Mizuki. “And the thing trapped there?”
“Well,” said Alfric. “That, I can’t say for certain. The dungeons don’t tend to recreate what’s on the outside very literally, they’re inspired by it, at least in some way. But in the non-dungeon world, the lost civilization did a lot of this, um … capture. They would encircle and entrap beasts of incredible power.” He shrugged. “We’re not entirely sure why, but we think it’s possible they just didn’t have the means to kill them. That would be at odds with their prowess as builders, but,” he shrugged.
“So … what happens?” asked Mizuki. “You called someone in, are they going to shut down the dungeon?”
“For a bit, maybe,” said Alfric. “That we found something like that in the dungeon suggests that we might find something like that in the hex, and if it’s intact, and contains something, then someone will come in and find the circle, figure out what’s inside it, figure out if we can kill it, then hopefully kill it. And if they can’t kill it, then they’ll seal it up as much as possible and then elevate the dungeon risk so it requires a higher key.”
“How do you know all this stuff?” asked Mizuki.
Alfric took a sip of his wine. “You pick it up over time, I guess. I like learning things. I like reading. When I was little, I wanted to be an archeologist.”
“Is there anything you didn’t want to be when you were little?” asked Hannah with a little laugh. “Sailor, explorer, soldier, spy? I’m not keepin’ a list, but if I were, seems it would be pretty long.”
“Always targeted at the wild spots,” said Alfric. “But dungeoneer has them all beat.” He coughed lightly. “Speaking of which, how do we feel about the dungeon?”
“Middling,” said Hannah. “Easy battles, save for some fright at the end of it. Decent enough loot.”
“We need to figure out how to get the chest to stop following us,” said Isra. It was sitting in the doorway of the dining room. It was, thankfully, party bound, but it was going to be a troublesome thing, because what they would ideally have liked would have been to have it follow instructions and sit in a corner of the house when it wasn’t in use.
“Tomorrow will be an undone day and I’ll get it identified,” said Alfric. “Along with the other stuff.”
“The thimble is armor,” said Hannah, who was saying it in Mizuki’s direction. “Probably going to Alfric.”
“Aw, you did testing without me?” Mizuki asked.
“Just a bit,” said Hannah. “You said it was party bound.”
“Well what does it do?” asked Mizuki.
“Armor,” said Alfric. “I’ll be taking it, if that’s okay with everyone.”
“Yeah, but what kind of armor?” asked Mizuki. “You can’t just say it’s armor, that’s boring, what kind of armor, how does it work?”
“The thimble extends to cover the whole body,” said Alfric. “Or we think so, it got as far as my shoulder. It takes some time, growing slowly, but peels back and collapses down easily. I think for full body coverage, if that’s where it ends up, will require a half hour’s notice or something like that, but it flexes well, breathes far better than it should, and seems to offer good protection. It morphs, just a bit.” He held up a hand, spreading out his fingers. “Switches from mitten to glove with only a little force.”
“Is there a difference between a mitten and a glove?” asked Verity with a frown.
Hannah turned to her. “How did you survive winter in Pucklechurch?”
“I stayed inside,” Verity shrugged. “As I assumed all right-thinking people did. Dondrian doesn’t really get snow, or cold, or have seasons in any meaningful sense.”
“A glove has room for the fingers,” said Mizuki. “A mitten is more like a sock.”
“Ah,” said Verity. “I had never really thought about it.”
“We’re going to get you some proper clothes this winter,” said Hannah. “Clothes that will mean that you don’t just sing yourself warm.”
“We’re going shopping,” said Isra. “We can look at winter clothes.”
“Poor time to buy them,” shrugged Mizuki. She pushed her plate forward. “We have more entads to test, right?”
“If that’s how you want to end the day,” said Alfric. “Or you could wait until tomorrow, which would be a bit safer.”
“I need something,” said Mizuki. She was feeling jittery. “And there’s nothing in the world that’s better than entad testing.”
Alfric raised an eyebrow, and seemed quite skeptical about that. “Well, we have a lot left to do, the only reason we know the thimble is because I tried it on while we were waiting for you to be done at the temple.”
“Let me clean up first,” said Mizuki. “Then we’ll get our stuff out and see.”
Doing dishes went faster with many hands, and for a moment they were all in the kitchen together, though Verity was the only one who was actually helping Mizuki. This struck Mizuki as a little bit odd, since Verity only rarely helped out around the house, which had never been much of a bother since it was clearly outside her expertise.
“Doing okay?” asked Verity. She was standing next to Mizuki at the sinks, and gave a friendly bump of the hips.
“Fine,” said Mizuki. “Just a lot of not understanding going on today, one of those times when it feels like I’m walking through a library full of books that are written in a language I don’t know.”
“Yeah?” asked Verity.
“You probably don’t know what that’s like,” said Mizuki.
“Oh, I do,” said Verity. “That’s how it always felt with music. They start slow, and then it’s one more thing, and one more thing, and different techniques, and it feels like it will never, ever end. And it still hasn’t ended, but each new thing I learn means there’s just slightly less that’s left. I think that’s how you go about it, just chip away and hope that eventually you can look back at all the chips and see that you’ve made a little alcove for yourself.”
“Huh,” said Mizuki. “Except you’re like one of the best musicians in the world at the age of eighteen, so …”
Verity cleared her throat. “Well, yes. Though I wouldn’t say that I’m anywhere in contention for best in the world, a lot of the accolades I was given were just because I was Chosen.” She paused. “I think.”
“See, this is why elevation is bunk,” said Mizuki.
“It’s not bunk,” said Alfric, who had been engaged in other conversation. “It’s just that being good at music isn’t really a part of the background calculation the Editors created.”
“Because it doesn’t help to kill anyone?” asked Mizuki.
“Probably,” Alfric shrugged. “And while Verity is a very good musician, especially considering her age, in terms of bardic magic, she’s still got a lot of progression left.”
“You’re so sweet,” said Verity with a roll of her eyes. She put the last of the dry dishes away and looked at her hands. “Pruny fingers aren’t so good to play with, so I suppose we’ll all sit down in the living room for some entad testing.”
Normally they broke apart for entad testing, but it was getting late, so they made up some rules for a little game, which had surprisingly been Alfric’s suggestion. They would only do one entad at a time, and each person would get a minute or so with it to try whatever they wanted before it went off to the next person. This ended up involving a lot of shouting, some of it helpful but most of it silly.
“Stab yourself!” called Hannah.
“For the last time I’m not stabbing myself,” said Verity, though she was poking all sorts of other things, trying to get the needle to do something interesting.
“I’m going to run to get some thread,” said Alfric. “I’ll be right back.”
“Is that allowed?” asked Verity, whose poking had produced nothing. She handed the needle to Mizuki, her time having run out.
“Seems like it,” said Mizuki. “But I have a special trick that Alfric doesn’t know about.” She looked over at the doorway and smiled at Alfric as he came back in. “Alric, give me the thread.”
Verity laughed. “Some trick.”
“You can get your own thread,” said Alfric, though he’d almost handed it over.
“What if I said please?” asked Mizuki.
“Still no,” said Alfric.
“It’s my thread,” said Mizuki, which was just a guess.
“It’s from a sewing kit that was paid for with my own money, for the party’s use,” said Alfric.
“See!” said Mizuki. “For the party’s use, I’m a member of the party, it’s mine to use.”
“Your time is up,” said Hannah.
“No way that was a minute,” said Mizuki.
“It probably was,” said Verity. “Be a good sport.”
“Alfric, I blame you,” said Mizuki as she handed the needle to him.
It took him most of the minute to thread the needle, which Mizuki knew from experience was a tougher thing to do than it seemed like, though in this case Alfric wasn’t helped by the combination of chatter and the wine he’d had with dinner. Eventually though, he got the thread through, and from there it was just a matter of giving the right thing a poke.
“Thread changes to match,” said Alfric. “It’ll be interesting to see whether that can be exploited or not.”
“How would you?” asked Isra.
“If it’s a true matching, creating material from nothing like an ectad, or transformation, I guess, since you still need thread, then you can turn low-quality thread into high-quality thread,” said Alfric. “I don’t know what the most expensive thread in the world is, or what the cheapest is, but you could make some kind of little machine that would turn a spool of one into a spool of another. Then it’s just a matter of running that and making money. Though there are bound to be all kinds of entads that do something similar, and they’re already up and running, so it’s a matter of trying to take a piece of the pie.”
Isra nodded. “Undercut them.”
“Or go in with them,” said Alfric. “Form of cartel, if possible, at least a local one.”
“Dirty,” said Hannah, shaking her head.
That got them into a bit of a debate, and the idea of entad testing was set aside for a moment so they could have at it. Mizuki didn’t really like the conversation, mostly because she felt like she’d been completely left in the dust. She understood what a cartel was, but the arguments about whether or not they should exist, whether they were inevitable, what the response of the government should be like, was all over her head. She didn’t think that they were even going all that in-depth on it either, but it felt like she was forced to sit there, mouth closed, lest she say something completely stupid about it. A lot of people in trades formed a guild, with Isra and Mizuki both being in guilds for their own profession, but there was nothing like price-fixing going on there, and no one had ever even talked to Mizuki about what she should be charging. Mizuki’s own take on the subject, which she knew lacked depth, was that it sounded nice to have someone telling her how much things needed to cost.
The helm was party bound as well, and Mizuki grabbed it before the conversation on cartels was even properly finished, hoping that she could get things moving along. Unfortunately, there wasn’t all that much of a game to play, because the effect was obvious right away, and might have been guessed by the design of wings that came up from where the ears were. Mizuki floated up, and the conversation stopped entirely as they watched her feet leave the ground.
“Huh,” said Alfric. “Pretty good.”
“I’m going outside,” said Mizuki, and she moved toward the back door, floating above the hardwood floors before anyone could say anything. Alfric called after her, but then she was out the door and up into the air.
The helm moved her faster than she moved when sprinting, though in the air, it was hard to tell. It wasn’t quite the same as flying under magical power, but it was fast enough and with a slightly bit of weightlessness. A hundred feet into the air, she stopped and looked around, seeing Pucklechurch from above, as she’d done many times before. She felt her hair, and noticed that it was weightless, floating in the wind. It was good to fly, it always was, and now she was going to be able to do it pretty much whenever she wanted to.
<Mizuki, come down,> said Alfric. There was a note of authority in his voice that she normally liked, but here felt wrong. <We don’t know how long it lasts.>
Alfric, unfortunately, had a point, and Mizuki began a slow descent, her view of the lights of the town beneath the starry sky gradually lost.
“Please don’t do that again,” said Alfric when Mizuki’s feet touched the ground.
“Sorry,” said Mizuki. “Just blowing off some steam.”
“If it was the argument —” he began.
“Nah,” said Mizuki. “Come on, let’s test the sword and,” she sighed, “bow, then go to bed. But once we figure the helm out, I have to warn you, and everyone else, that I’m going to be taking primary possession of it.”
“That’s fine,” breathed Alfric. “I’m just glad you didn’t plummet to your death.”
“Me too,” smiled Mizuki. “But there’s always tomorrow.”
