The Third Step: Chapter Sixteen

I plucked the Misphere up and sent it into Dusk’s vault, then turned and spoke to Sarah’s mother. We spoke a few moments longer, as I allowed her to reminisce over the memories of times years past, many before I had even been born. Eventually, however, she let me go, and I left to meet up with Kene and Meadow at the public city record hall. 

Even with directions, getting to the hall was annoyingly difficult. I was forced to float up through the trees, bouncing from spot to spot, running in a long, circuitous route that looped around a variety of public parks and designated forested lands. 

In truth, if I hadn’t been in such a rush due to running late for our meeting, I probably would have found it to be quite pleasant. As things were, however, I couldn’t help but feel annoyed, even as I flickered from spot to spot with Foxstep, working to skip the flight lanes. I thought I might be breaking some sort of social stigma with that, as I caught more than one person giving me an annoyed or grossed out glare as I zipped around, but I didn’t have time to bother with it. 

When I finally arrived at the record hall, I did pause for a second. Despite being lifted at least a hundred and fifty feet up in the air, amidst the boughs of a massively overgrown oak tree, it was a massive edifice. The building towered three stories high, made of polished white stone. Despite this, the building didn’t seem to be putting any pressure onto the tree. 

I extended my mana senses, flooding them through the building as I pulsed both Sky Dragon’s Senses and my Spatial Sense. Chunks of the building were warded off, likely the records that were confidential, or at least required the filing of an official request in order to access, but a solid two thirds of it was completely open and unblocked. 

As my senses swept through the building, I noticed a familiar sensation running through it. Mixed throughout the stone, like the ballasts on a ship, was a magical mineral: float stone. The thought of ballasts actually wasn’t entirely wrong, just inverse. Rather than weighing something down in order to provide stability, it was providing lift, keeping the entire thing essentially neutral weight. 

Of course, my curiosity wasn’t the only reason I’d flooded a building with my mana senses. There were dozens of people I could sense in the building, but only two of them had the odd, not-quite real sensation of a simulacrum, summoned creature, or other construct. And of those, only one of them was also located next to a source of fourth gate solar and life magic, as well as an enfield. 

Though… there was actually a second enfield in the building. That was strange – we hadn’t actually seen any other enfields in all of Mossford, but now there were two in one building? Maybe they were simply more common here? 

I locked my senses onto space in that area, then teleported next to Kene, Meadow, and Siobhan.

“Hey y’all,” I said, waving as I appeared, pausing a second to catch my breath. “Sorry, my meeting with the mom ran longer than I expected.” 

“I figured it was something of the sort,” Kene said, flipping through a stack of papers. “I hope it went okay?” 

Before I could respond, Dawn floated out of Dusk’s spirit and spat something out at Kene, the treasure that she’d selected. Only… it was different. I’d seen Dawn do things to upgrade natural treasures and phenomena several times now, and as before, golden crystals covered what looked to be a shimmering droplet of blue-white water. Kene took it, examined it curiously, then swallowed it. I gave them a curious look, so they explained.

“That’s called projection-water, and should actually help me remotely cast spells through my orbs. Though I’m not sure what Dawn did to it, most of what she does seems beneficial. Or really deadly.” 

I chuckled at that and gestured to the piles of papers that my partner and mentor were working through. 

“So, what’s the scoop? Found anything of interest yet?” 

“Both more and less than we may have hoped,” Meadow responded. “Reports of a potential rebirth tree are extremely common, not because the trees are common, but because it can be difficult to distinguish between a rebirth tree and normal, fresh corpse bits.” 

“Lovely. How about a kludde or cwn anwnn? Any leads on those?” 

“Yes,” Kene said. “Mostly.”

“Mostly?” 

“They don’t use the quest or guild system here like they do in Mossford, but delegation of tasks is still important and useful. They use a ranking system for organizing threats, and assign jobs to people based on their ranking. If someone doesn’t accept in time, it gets automatically reassigned, though the amount of time and freedom to refuse depends on the threat presented to public safety.”

“Alright, I guess that makes sense. I know there used to be a hunter bureau in Mossford that did something similar, with C class threats and the like. I’m guessing there’s some sort of beastie that needs relocation, and it’s a mission we can take?” 

“It is,” Meadow said, speaking up from turning her reports over. “That’s not the strange part, though. The strange part is that you’ve been designated a Class VI, Rank II Naturalist.”

“How? I’ve never been to the Obsidian Forest in my life. Primes, I don’t even know what the classes and ranks mean!” 

Kene glanced up from where they’d turned back to their own reports. 

“Two weeks ago, a letter was received that submitted all relevant paperwork to have your position in the Wyldwatch and Spiritwatch sent to Obsidian Forest, to temporarily register for a Naturalist position during your visit. Apparently. Catch.”

They picked up a letter and tossed it to me. I glanced it over to see it was filled with the paperwork that they’d mentioned, and included an identification card for the Naturalists.

I felt a chill roll over my body. Two weeks ago, I’d been in the wilds outside of Delitone, hunting down a Time Catch. I certainly wouldn’t have penned a letter. More pressingly, even if the timeline had matched when I’d been near a mail office, it wasn’t something that I’d done. 

“Orykson?” I asked. 

“No,” Meadow said, shaking his head. “The old man might do that for Dragontooth or another territory in the Alliance, but we’re not in the alliance. Besides, he would have just ordered it to be done, not sent a letter supposedly from you.” 

“I think it was the Headsman’s daughter. The oracle we just met,” I said, then frowned. “Wait, what is her name? It feels weird to just keep calling her the headsman’s daughter.” 

“She goes by a handful of aliases, but all of them begin with an H. Henrietta, Harriet, Hailey, Hamburger Girl – yes, that one is real – and more.” 

“Huh. I’m just gonna call her H. I think H was the one who signed me up. It’s more than a little unnerving that she was able to do that.” 

“Indeed,” Meadow agreed. “It’s always risky when an Oracle acts like she does. I truly hope she knows what she’s doing. ” 

Kene spoke aloud then, with the kind of pattern that suggested he was quoting someone, likely his grandmother. 

“Bad oracles try to bend fate to be what they want. Good oracles observe the world as a passenger. The best oracles know when to observe and when to take action.”

Meadow nodded to them, and we started to settle back down into working through reports when I realized that there was something rather important that we’d missed out on. 

“Wait, if I was registered, do I have a mission? You mentioned that I was registered when I spoke about the kludde and cwn anwnn.” 

“Oh, right,” Kene said, looking up. “There’s a small village near the cordon whose food shipments have been being stolen by a kludde that seems to live in or around their river. It’s not especially aggressive unless the food is taken back, so it was ranked low priority.” 

I shivered as Kene said that. If the time frame linked up properly, it meant that H had decided to submit these requests my direction on either the very day or the day after I decided I wanted to take Kludde’s Weight. That went beyond uncomfortable, and into the downright spooky territory. Even if she’d been born with the full set of winds, a third gate knowledge mage shouldn’t be that competent and powerful at gathering information and using it. 

“Then what are you looking for?” I asked. 

“Cwn anwnn packs in the area,” Kene said. “Also looking for any reports of the tree.” 

“Well, let me help,” I said, picking up some of the papers from both my partner and mentor and starting to work through. 

In the end, it took us the better part of the day to work out a route that would allow us to relocate the Kludde to another point along the river, explore areas where body parts had been found without a known field of corpses being nearby, and cross through the hunting grounds of at least three cwn anwnn packs in the hopes that one or more of them would be open to working with us. After we’d completed our route, I signed off with the Naturalists that I’d be taking the job to relocate the Kludde, then we all headed out to get dinner and retire to Dusk for the night. 

The food in the Obsidian Forest was interesting. I had somewhat expected it to be very heavy on meat, given the sheer amount of mist, death, and darkness around, but to my surprise, there was almost no meat at all on our dishes. The only bit in my meal was a small strip of steak that had been well seasoned with salt, pepper, and thyme. That had then been placed over a massive medley of turnips, mushrooms, potatoes, sweet potatoes, apples, spinach, hot arugula, and spicy cabbage. 

The entire thing was quite nice, with the spicier cabbage and arugula balanced by the sweeter flavors of the apple and sweet potato, and the small amount of meat went a long way, especially when combined with the well-roasted chanterelle and bella mushroom mix. I resolved to put it into my repertoire of dishes that I’d cook sometime, and made a mental note to spend some time with Dusk expanding our herb and vegetable garden. 

The following morning, we set out, flying out in the direction of the village that we’d been sent to save. Within the city, flight was only permitted within the specific lanes that allowed it, but once we were out on the open roads with nothing but spirit horse driven wagons and carriages beneath us, we were able to pick up the pace and fly. 

Spirit horses had been a bit of a shock to see at first, as I wasn’t used to so many spirits taking on the same appearance. Spirit’s forms tended to be pretty strange and individualistic, and they were composed purely of mana, not energy. Nearly every spirit I’d seen had a slightly different look, even if they were the same type of being.

It seemed like a lot of hassle to me, and the enchanted carriages of Mossford seemed far more sensible, but the system clearly worked for the people here, so I only pondered over logistical issues as we flew further out. 

Unlike in Mossford, which was largely sloping, gentle hills that became interrupted by forest as things got further out, Obsidian Forest was, well, forest, and the road grew increasingly hemmed in by trees as we moved further from civilization, until we were forced to float mere feet above the ground, or else risk losing it.

After spending the better part of the day flying, however, we eventually spotted the bridge that led to the village.