13-14. Normal is Relative
Elijah stared at the wall, unsure if he was meant to take the next step. After two days of observation, he’d already exhausted his capacity to learn more about the natives. In that time, he’d watched their work cycle, and against all odds, he’d even picked up a few words of their language. It was much easier than he’d expected, largely because he effectively had eighty-one minds he could devote to such a mundane task.
If he kept at it, he suspected he could master their language in a couple of years. Perhaps much more quickly, once he truly understood the basics. However, that was complicated by the fact that it followed no grammatical rules with which he was familiar. It didn’t resemble any language he’d ever heard, so he was starting from scratch.
Still, those few words – grow, plant, and Dravkein, which he suspected was the name of the town – were a good start.
He’d also discovered the method behind the crops’ growth. Despite the lack of corruption in the air, the soil was no less barren of nutrients than outside the protective rings. The natives had solved that problem through ritual circles that enhanced the ambient vitality. Even then, the results were mixed.
Most of the plants were stunted and slightly malformed. His first impression was that that was just their nature, but after examining them with Soul of the Wild, he’d determined that they were far smaller than they should have been.
In retrospect, that wasn’t surprising.
Ritual circles and magic could go a long way toward getting results, but there was no substitute for a naturally vital environment. Elijah had discovered that during his many attempts to grow his own crops in various caves he’d coopted over the past few months. That the natives had managed as much as they had was more than impressive.
Still, it was an artificial ecosystem that couldn’t exactly thrive because it lacked anything but the most basic necessities.
As for the people – he’d determined that his first impressions were mostly accurate. The mutations were almost uniformly cosmetic, but there were a few people – usually the older ones – with corruption flowing through their veins. Elijah could only guess that they’d simply been exposed for too long.
Elijah wanted nothing more than to extend his Mantle of Authority and banish that corruption, but even if he could guarantee success, he still wasn’t entirely certain if he could trust the natives. They seemed peaceful enough. All but normal, as far as he could tell. But there was no guarantee that they would welcome an outsider.
The possibilities that came with their existence were tantalizing enough to make him want to find out, though.
The only real problem was that he wasn’t sure whether the wall might function similarly to other barriers he’d encountered. His most potent memory of what he feared was when he’d tried to enter Kalki, only to be immediately detected and sent running from the fortress city’s defenses.
If that happened in Dravkein, things might get a bit hairier than they had back on Earth.
But as far as he could tell, there were no anti-stealth enchantments on the walls. Nor was there a conventional shield. It seemed that all of the circle’s stored energy went toward maintaining the atmosphere inside.
Which Elijah desperately wanted to experience.
Would it be like the interior of his evolved tent? Or would it be weaker? There was no telling, but he very much needed to find out.
So, he decided to cross the circle.
The decision was not a flippant one, and if it became necessary, he could always escape. The hunters he’d encountered were strong, but aside from the white-bearded leader, they definitely weren’t demi-gods. Instead, they relied on very specific hunting methods to survive outside their circles. By comparison, Elijah only needed to shift into the Shape of the Sky and activate Lightning Rush in order to leave them far behind.
That reduced the risk of exploring the city proper, though not to zero. There was always the chance that there was someone truly powerful inside. Dravkein might even be under the influence of a deity’s domain.
But Elijah was willing to take that risk if it meant he might discover some other means of survival. Or the longshot of finding a way home. Even the prospect of talking to other people who weren’t Benedict was so magnetic that Elijah found it difficult to resist the pull of simple company.
So, without further ado, he leaped, kicked off Cloud Step, and soared over the twenty-foot wall. He landed in a cloud of black dust on the other side. He’d timed it well, because most of the population had retired for the night. How they determined the cycle was a mystery, but from what Elijah had seen, they kept to it with a near-religious fervor. As a result, the only people out and about were guards wearing black suits of armor.
More importantly, no alarms went off. No guards came to investigate his infiltration of their town. He’d made it entirely undetected, though he was uncertain if that was due to the evolved stealth ability or if they simply lacked the capability of building a detection function into the wall’s defenses.
Probably the former, given the expertise they’d displayed so far.
In any case, now that Elijah was inside, he could learn more about the natives. With that in mind, he padded down the narrow walkway that ran along the interior of the wall until he found a main avenue. It was only a dozen feet wide, but that was enough to accommodate the city’s foot traffic. As far as he’d seen, they didn’t use vehicles, and the narrow streets supported that assumption.
Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.
The first place Elijah visited was an area closest to the wall. He’d smelled it from outside, so when he saw the slaughter yard’s contents, he was unsurprised. The place was immaculately clean, though it only took a little focus for Elijah to sense the rendering pit below. In addition, there existed a series of stone troughs that led to a nearby tannery.
It was obvious that the natives used every part of the animals the hunters acquired.
But what fascinated Elijah was the series of runic circles surrounding the butchery. The second he’d stepped inside, he sensed its purpose, though in retrospect, he should have expected it. For every moment the meat remained inside, it was cleansed. Not as thoroughly as if it had been subjected to Elijah’s Mantle of Authority, but clearly enough to render it safe for the residents to eat.
A few workers were present, mostly cleaning their spaces. And Elijah was a little surprised to see that their mutations were a lot less pronounced than the farmers’. Was that important? He had no idea.
After examining everything and trying to memorize the glyphs decorating the runic circles, Elijah moved on from the slaughter yard. The homes and businesses surrounding that all-important but foul-smelling location were clearly meant for low-status people. Mostly farmers and a few people Elijah suspected were hunters.
Even without their concealing armor, they were easily identifiable by the way they felt to his senses. Seeming to confirm his perception was the way they moved. Confidently. Like predators who knew their place in the world.
As a hunter himself, Elijah could recognize them for what they were.
Each of them were mutated, too. Not in form. There were no extra arms or tentacles. Instead, their skin was almost uniformly black and rubbery, and their facial features resembled half-healed burns.
But they didn’t seem like they were in pain. In fact, they went about their lives the same as anyone else.
It was like no one even noticed the deformities.
Perhaps they didn’t. After all, that was likely normal for them. But from what Elijah had seen – through brief glimpses into their lives – it seemed more like people pointedly ignoring the obvious rather than true obliviousness. They saw. They simply chose to look the other way.
Over the course of the following day, Elijah got a sense of the city’s rhythm and layout. The outer areas were devoted to lower-status people, and the closer he drew to the center of the circular settlement, the higher the residents’ class. That was evident in the reality of their comparative lack of deformity.
However, even in the relatively large homes in the middle of town, the effect of the abyss was obvious. The only difference was that those effects were more like odd birthmarks than actual deformities. Although Elijah did see a few people with extra eyes, usually at their temples.
They didn’t seem functional, and instead were glazed over and milky white.
In addition to the obvious physical differences, Elijah could intuit even more of the settlement’s class structure by the fact that all of the skilled laborers were located closer to the city’s center. Tradesmen of every type were in residence, though their premises stood shoulder-to-shoulder with those of people who specialized in runecrafting and other, more esoteric occupations.
There were Entertainers there, too. Men and women who painted and sculpted. Sang and danced. Elijah could feel ethera churning around them, increasing the atmospheric density as well as filling the air with vitality and serenity. He found himself watching a particularly lithe woman dancing in what had to be a studio. She had no audience, so she was obviously just practicing. But the aura of belonging she fostered was so powerful that Elijah found it difficult to tear himself away.
Then there was the building at the very center of Dravkein. It was taller and more graceful than any of the other structures, which, even from afar, marked it as a place of importance. When Elijah drew closer, he saw that it was predictably the home of the local government.
People of importance – denoted by their slightly better-quality clothes and the air of authority surrounding them – worked inside. Presumably, they did so in pursuit of the betterment of their people’s existence, though Elijah didn’t hold out much hope of that. In his experience, the best outcome was that they kept things running smoothly while keeping their noses out of their subjects’ everyday lives.
Most governments struggled to maintain that balance, usually going too far one way or the other.
In any case, Elijah wasn’t necessarily interested in their form of government. Instead, what truly intrigued him was that something very important was missing. On Earth, any settlement of decent size – and even some that only hosted a few dozen people – had access to a World Tree Branch. But Dravkein did not.
No matter how far Elijah searched, there was no crystalline tree offering access to the system’s benefits. In retrospect, that should not have surprised him, given that he stood on an excised planet in the middle of the abyss. But he’d dared to hope for more.
The people of Dravkein, for all their ability to survive in such a hostile environment, would offer no means of escape.
It definitely wasn’t the seed of hope he wanted. But seeing them living their lives was a guard against the pessimism that had infected his mind and threatened to crush his spirits. It bolstered his soul in a way that nothing else could have.
More than anything, he wanted to make contact. To enlist their help and perhaps find some measure of belonging. He wasn’t averse to spending long stretches of time alone. He’d done so often enough that he’d grown accustomed to solitude. However, like every other human being, he was a social creature, and he craved companionship that a broken man like Benedict simply could not provide.
But before he revealed himself, he needed to talk to his ally.
So, it was with some degree of reluctance that he left Dravkein behind. The trip through the fields came with no small amount of regret. He wanted to stop and enjoy the vitality, but he refrained.
His mood worsened with every ring he passed. His Mantle of Authority still protected him from the abyssal atmosphere, but he could feel it closing in. Always degrading the branches of his soul in an effort to consume him.
Or worse, transform him into a monster.
He had no trouble resisting, but after spending a few days under the protection of Dravkein’s ring-based ritual circle, it felt even more painful than when he’d first arrived. He pushed that agony into its own cluster of leaves and pushed forward.
He kept to the ground, as much to reacclimate himself to the abyss as to avoid the monsters above. So far, they hadn’t descended to within a hundred feet of the surface, but it only took once to get him killed. And Elijah knew better than to tempt fate.
The trip back was both agonizingly slow and blessedly quick, and he reached the campsite after only a couple of days. When he ducked inside the tent, he found Benedict lying on his pallet of pillows and blankets, just absently staring at the ceiling.
If Elijah hadn’t known better, he would have thought the man dead.
He barely breathed. He didn’t move. And even the ethera inside him was sluggish.
“I didn’t think you would come back,” the man stated, and even his voice lacked the bitterness Elijah had expected. It was like Benedict had completely given up.
“I did, and I have news.”
“Is it a way home?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t care.”
“I found people. There’s a whole city,” Elijah revealed. “Maybe twenty thousand.”
Benedict blinked. “That many?”
Elijah nodded. “It might not be a way home, but it could be a way to do more than just survive.”
Benedict didn’t verbalize a response, but at least his ethera churned a little faster at that prospect.