Ar'Kendrithyst

Today was Erick’s third day at the farms, and his and Jane’s 30th day on Veird.

30 days was a full month, by the local calendar. All the months were 30 days long. One year lasted exactly 370 days, or 12 months, with one tenday ‘week’ of Festival in the middle of winter. It made sense that their years and months were all perfect; the gods and otherwise had crafted Veird from the corpses of the previous worlds, after all. Currently, Spur was in the middle of spring, and the snows of the far away northern mountains and Crystal Forest were steadily melting, sending water both deep down into the Underworld, and under the sands of the Crystal Forest. He knew all of this not only because he had picked it up over the last few weeks, but also because someone had left a farmer’s almanac in the temple.

Erick was learning a lot of little facts about Veird because of that book. Not only about the timetables of local events, but also [Grow] techniques and ways to ensure that whatever you created could not propagate without natural pollinators, or [Grow]; no one wanted a Kill and Exterminate Quest issued against them by a god or otherwise.

Bees and flowers and seeds were the preferred method of natural propagation, and honey was always great to have. Someone had even brought in some bees to one of the plots of land near the middle of the farm. They were thumb sized bugs that buzzed hard and flew far.

The bees seemed ambivalent to the platinum rain.

The cows a kilometer north loved the rain, though. Erick could hear their happy moos from his spot in the temple, reading with his back against a pillar and his butt on a bench. They kept mooing and Erick kept reading.

They mooed louder. And louder? What—

mooOOOO!

That one was a cow scream. Erick leapt up and out of his seat only seconds after Poi went on high alert.

Erick asked, “What is it?”

As fast as Poi alerted, he calmed. He said, “Mimics attacking from the Forest, but the guards are already on it. Should have raised a wall... yesterday…” Poi paused. He said, “Killzone says they’re not going to raise a wall at all. As long as the area looks undefended, the Shades don’t care. Right now this whole farm looks like a great big target, and… Killzone says that makes them complacent.”

Erick looked at Poi. He didn’t know the man very well, but he knew enough to know when Poi’s professionalism was strained. Erick asked, “You don’t agree?”

Poi remained silent.

“You’re allowed to disagree with your commanding officer.” Erick added, “At least privately.”

Poi said, “Killzone has been at this job for a lot, lot longer than I. He has done well in organizing the army that contains the Shades. He knows the enemy. He knows how they react to certain stimuli.” Poi sighed. “This just means that the Adventurer’s Guild needs to point more adventurers at the mimics. They shouldn’t have been able to muster a mob this close to town.” Poi paused. He said, “It’s possible that they have seen the green and have come to rip it out of the ground, in force.”

Erick asked, “If the crystal mimics clear out everything green, is the whole continent a desert?”

“No, sir.” Poi said, “Only this part of Glaquin is a Crystal Forest.” Poi looked over at the book in Erick’s hands. “Is there no map in that farmer’s almanac?”

The cows had stopped bleating by now. They resumed gently mooing at the rain. Whatever had happened, it was over.

Erick answered, “A political map, and not a very good one.” He turned to the map and stared at the thin black lines and tiny dots. He said, “I’m having trouble with the vastness of this place.”

Spur was located in the lower middle half of a desert, roughly 6000 km from East to West and 4500 km from North to South, with major variations due to the various mountain ranges that surrounded the Crystal Forest. In the whole desert there were only half a dozen markers for cities, while just past the Mondariska mountains to the East, there laid a civilization called the Greensoil Republic, which occupied about the same geographical size as the Crystal Forest, with hundreds of smaller cities and several larger ones, and probably countless unnamed towns strewn throughout. To the West, past another set of mountains and nestled between two ranges, were the Wasteland Kingdoms; a much smaller place, only a thousand kilometers wide, but 3500 km from North to South.

The almanac only covered a quarter of the continent of Glaquin, which was 1 of 4 such massive continents on a planet that was half water. The rest of the continent was largely unexplored, ancient forest. That did not make much sense, considering Earth was almost completely known, and the humans of Earth had done all their exploring without magic that allowed them to fly and dig and survive practically anywhere.

But looking at the distance gauges on the maps and with a bit of mental math, the fact that Glaquin was mostly unexplored began to make some sense.

The Crystal Forest was about 27 million square kilometers large. The Greensoil Republic was 25 million.

Africa, back on Earth, occupied 30 million square kilometers.

“This map doesn’t go into any real detail.” Erick confessed, “And I’m still having trouble understanding the size of Veird. I think your planet is at least twice, no... four times as big as Earth? Probably larger.” Erick was still digesting all that information. He paused. He said, “And the map is political. I don't see forests or otherwise on this map.”

Poi nodded. “The surrounding mountains keep the crystal mimics contained because they don’t like the cold and the mountains are very tall. The only gap in the circle is at the Wasteland Kingdoms; those incani keep the mimics out of their lands as best they can. And the coast, of course. Mimics can't swim. Beyond that are the forests and the grasslands and the cultural and architectural remains of people who failed to hold back the monsters.”

“… So this entire land is a desert because of those guys...”

“Correct, sir. It’s my understanding that people tried extermination campaigns long ago, but mimics either hide or breed, so you can understand how they failed.”

“… And they’re killing our attempts to keep this land a farmland.”

“Also correct, sir. I doubt they’ll get far, though. We can defend against even the largest Monster March, provided they’re just crystal mimics.” Poi looked up. He turned to Erick, and said, “It’s noon. You’ve done almost two and a half hours, so far.”

“Right.” Erick stopped feeding mana to his [Exalted Storm Aura] and set down the farmer’s almanac where he found it. “Time to finish this, too.”

[Telekinesis].