Chapter: 42 – Well… That’s New

Over the next hour, Tala filled the fruit picker seven more times, each time moving back to the rock, or another convenient seat, to process her harvest.

During that time, she lost another shirt and two pairs of pants.

With one of each left, she was forced to continue her work without other covering.

It wasn’t unpleasant in the cool weather, but it definitely left her feeling like every tree, rock, or bush held some hidden watcher.

She filled both glass containers completely and ate a picker-basket full of the berries for lunch, supplemented by the travel food she’d purchased in Bandfast. No need to let this go to waste.

She drank a lot of water, though it did little against her building headache. Is this from lack of coffee? It’s probably from too little coffee. She grumbled unpleasantly about the stinginess of inns.

Her lunch now finished, she looked down at herself and noted that her fingers were stained a near maroon, and there were some drip stains on her chest as well. She could only imagine what her face looked like if enough had gathered to drip down off her chin. She had tried to be careful, knowing that every drop of juice held power, but there was only so much she could do. She let out a resigned sigh. Oh well. I suppose I’ll bathe when I get back to the city.

Attempts at rationality aside, she was quite irritated at the waste of power that the juice represented, and she resolved to be even more careful going forward. Though, I don’t really know how I could be… Such a resolution, without a plan, was probably doomed to failure.

She pulled out the keg she’d purchased and set about emptying the initial containers into it. They filled it quite nicely, just as she’d hoped. She set the keg’s lid in place and pulled out a wooden mallet.

She’d purchased the mallet in Bandfast, along with several other random odds and ends, to help round out her options if unexpected things happened. As she’d hoped, it had turned out to be a wise choice.

It was a bit more difficult than she’d expected to properly set the keg’s lid, but she got it done, mentally referencing the barrel seller’s advice and instructions. Glad I asked, or this would have gone a lot more poorly…

With the full keg again stashed in her belt pouch, she had two empty jugs, ready to fill.

Here we go. Once more, into the grove.

Without clothing to protect, she was a bit less careful in this initial step, favoring speed over safety, and she was brushed, struck, and poked at least half a hundred times over the next hour. They never seemed to reach her skin, so she didn’t pay the brushes to much attention.

Her speed paid off, though, as she filled the two jugs and ate her absolute fill of the endingberries.

No wonder no one harvests these. I’d be dead a dozen times over. A hundred, more likely. From her experience, only her iron salve had kept her intact.

She withdrew for the final time, settled down on a comfortably flat boulder, and finished processing the last harvest. Then, she stored the fruit picker in the convenient hole prepared within her belt pouch. Is hole the right term? Carrying case doesn’t really work. Mount? Slot? It didn’t really matter.

She absently licked her fingers clean, relishing the tiny influx of power added to the storm within her with each drop. It had been a very productive outing. Not without its costs, however. She’d lost two shirts, three pairs of pants, and quite a bit of hair. She reached up and felt her patchy scalp with a sigh. She had not come through completely unscathed. Still, I’m alive, and there is no way I would have been without my peculiarities.

She had kept her hair growth inscriptions from activating, knowing that she could easily exhaust them if she let them trigger for every disintegrated chunk of hair. The salve that I worked into my hair helped some, but not as much as I’d hoped.

That said, she was ready to restore herself to a state that didn’t resemble someone newly recovered from a ravaging disease. Tala was about to let the magic loose when she had a realization. I’ve no idea if it will grow all my hair the proper length to recover from baldness, or if it will feather the growth so that the result is correct.

She knew that the inscriptions would restore her hair, but like most acts of magic, she didn’t know exactly how.

Well, there’s no time like the present to learn. So, she allowed power to flow through the activation scripts in her scalp and above her eyes.

Her hair did grow only as much as needed, and she felt the tingling power of one of her eyebrows returning to form. The other was miraculously untouched. Good to know. It isn’t wasteful. Though, in truth, she had expected nothing less from Holly’s work.

She regarded the two jugs alongside the keg, and decided that she wanted to contain and maintain the magic as much as possible.

She’d already worked iron salve into the outside of the keg, so she was able to place that back in her pouch with a happy smile.

The jugs were a different problem, given that they were glass and couldn’t really absorb the salve.

In the end, she pulled out two medium cloth sacks, turning them inside out and coating the insides with her salve before inverting them once more and placing a jug within each. I’ll have to buy another keg if I mean to store these longer-term… She’d been cognizant enough to finish filling her iron flask, and that was comfortably stored alongside the keg, its iron the only containment that vessel needed.

Now, the jugs were bound in iron salve, so the magic in the berries shouldn’t fade too quickly—if at all.

She felt positively brimming with power from the berries that she’d eaten. Unlike before, when she’d had her palms uncovered along with her eyes as possible escapes for the power, now only her eyes were open, and her inscriptions were actively working to keep power from flowing through that weak point.

Thankfully, those were gold inscriptions, like those of her passive enhancements, and should easily last until her return to Holly. The idea had been to prevent hostile magic from getting into her through her eyes, not escaping, however, and she could feel, and even see through her magesight, wisps of power slowly leaking from her open eyes.

She blessed the stars that none of the flailing branches had ever caught her in the eye; she wasn’t sure her inscriptions would prevent the entry of magic that was physically thrust into her eyeball. That would have been a disaster.

Her palms were not open now because she’d left the glue in place after treating the keg and fruit picker handle, earlier, and a healthy coating of iron salve had melded with the paste through the course of her work.

The power had nowhere to go except what little could escape from her eyes, and she felt it settling in within her, strengthening her, and adding weight behind her enhancements.

If she were being honest, she felt as if she could stand before a siege cannon and take the blast. Thankfully, such weapons of war hadn’t been seen by humanity in centuries, but they were still a subject of fascination for Tala. The idea that she could withstand one was intoxicating. And she found herself basking in the feeling of power, in the sunlight, in the ambient magic swirling around her, and in the cool breeze playing across her bare skin.

Woah, girl. Focus. You are standing, naked, in the Wilds, acting like some crazed nature sprite. Tala opened her eyes and let her arms fall back to her sides. Better.

The sun was past its zenith, and the afternoon was waning around her.

With a sigh of contentment for a job well done, Tala pulled out a pair of almost pristine pants, by her usual standards, and the shirt with the single repaired stab hole over her left breast. It was a much nicer shirt than she’d been wearing, but the stitched hole was obvious. She was not a practiced stitcher. Seamstress? Tailor? Probably didn’t matter.

She shrugged to herself. Either the seamstress will come through, or Brand’s tailor will make me some new clothing.

As she turned to go, she felt a twinge, which somehow reminded her of her knife. Right, I should put that back on my belt, so it’s ready to hand. She stuck her hand into her dimensional storage to search for the knife and found it immediately in her hand. Huh, I guess I instinctively knew where it was.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

She felt a bit of tiredness wash over her, but it wasn’t anything worth considering deeply. She hadn’t truly stopped all morning, with even her short breaks filled with work. It made sense that she’d feel some weariness in a moment’s pause.

She shrugged as she fastened the blade to hang opposite her belt pouch, balancing out her belt nicely.

Tala turned her steps back towards the city gate but paused when she came to the same rise that had first let her see the grove below. I didn’t take even half a percent of the fruit that’s down there…

It wouldn’t be hard to come back tomorrow. She could buy a few more kegs and spend a bit more time collecting. The power thundering within her was a potent argument for such a course of action.

That’s a good default plan. I’ll keep my options open, though. That decided, she turned her back on the grove and headed back towards the city.

As she walked, she followed her usual routine: reading, taking notes, sketching, and otherwise contemplating the myriad ideas and theories she’d come across.

For one new addition, she added the occasional bit of entertainment; every so often, she would toss a small bit of jerky in a random direction and watch it vanish in a flicker of dimensional energy. In for a copper.

As to her musings, she used her note-taking to help herself organize her thoughts and ideas surrounding difficult concepts.

A central figure in her thoughts was her knife.

The connection she felt with it was strong—much stronger than what she’d felt with her Archon Star—but it still felt like a thin thread of what it could and should be. If I want to strengthen the connection, do I give the knife power, or do I forge more stars and unify them with it?

More to the point, though, what would that gain her? Why would she want that connection strengthened?