FIFTY-TWO: The Necessary Functions

Alden and Kibby had decided that Plan 2 wouldn’t commence until Moon Thegund’s current night was almost at an end. They had about eleven days. It was too long to wait, and at the same time, they had so much to do to prepare that it felt like no time at all

“Take me with you!” Kibby demanded as Alden put the last few pieces of equipment into a backpack he’d found in one of the closets.

“I told you why I’m not going to do that.” He hefted the backpack. It weighed about one and a half Kibbys.

“Because when you die, you expect me to sit in the vault all by myself and die more slowly!”

“That’s not it,” Alden said as gently as he could. “I’m ninety-nine percent sure I’m not going to die. But I will be testing my movement trait heavily. That means I could make a mistake and exhaust myself too much to keep my preserved item safe. I want to make sure it’s only a bunch of supplies and not my learning partner.”

“I would be fine for a little while even if I wasn’t in the lab!”

“I know. I believe you when you tell me that. Because lying to me would be very dangerous in this situation, and you know it. But we’re still not going to waste your strength on this. Plan 2 might fail. So stay here in the vault and do that research you wanted to do, and save your energy for Plan 3.”

Kibby was scared to be left alone even for a few hours. Alden understood. He was scared to be leaving her, too.

But Plan 3 was the “Alden and Kibby travel to safety instead of waiting for it to come to them” plan. Also known as the most extremely terrifying plan. And for it to even have the slimmest chance of succeeding, Alden needed to understand what being outside the lab walls was really like.

And he felt like he had to at least make an attempt to rescue their one potential mode of transportation.

“I need you to entrust me with the backpack,” he said.

“You will not be able to use the mover discs without me. Your human brain won’t perform the necessary functions.”

Wow, she was really stretching for excuses now.

“I promise my human brain works well enough to operate a remote control. Even if it is a complicated one. Entrust me with the backpack, Kibby.”

It took a few more minutes of conversation, but she finally did it. Alden was relieved.

“Okay,” he said, securing the backpack around himself. He was already wearing the coat. “What did we do with the—”

Kibby lifted up a pair of very odd-looking glasses. She’d made them herself by prying some of the magic lenses out of the awesome binoculars and gluing them onto lab goggles.

You could see in the dark with them. It was a fuzzy black-and-white vision, but it would do.

“When the magic on them fails, you will be —————. You will lose your way back home.”

“They might not fail. And the lab lights are so bright I’ll be able to see them from a very long way away.”

Kibby nodded. She bit her lip. “If…if you come back I will give you a present.”

“Really?” Alden said, smiling at her. “What is it?”

“It’s something good that you want.”

“Now I’m very curious.”

“Then you should come back fast,” she said seriously.

*************************

Leaving the lab behind to walk into the pitch blackness of the chaos-steeped night was just as much fun as Alden had imagined it would be. He felt like he was slowly drifting away from the real world into an abyss that wanted to get handsy with his essential nature.

He was fresh right now and so good at assertive mode that he didn’t even have to think about it. His authority just pressed right back on its own. But the pressure never let up. And it would be worse when he got tired.

For a while, he went slowly, poking at the ground with a long metal rod he’d taken from the lab. The grass was all dead and rotted away now, except for the random blades that had become Thunder Grass or started to grow into looping vines. Pretty much everywhere he looked there was just bare, unstable soil.

Ugh, this is stupid, he thought as the metal sank a few inches into a random patch. Can I even run on this? Is there any point in trying the car at all?

The only thing that made him think that running might be okay was that he had decided his movement trait was based heavily on an extra symbolic understanding of the universe.

He hadn’t learned nearly as much as he needed to about magic, but by now, he’d accepted that it could happen in more than one way.

There were alterations in perception that nudged your authority slightly, there were skills that bound and shaped it for specific functions, and there was the actual conscious control that Alden had been learning to exert and love in his lessons with Kibby.

And that was just the normalish stuff.

There were also the rituals to consider. Alden could drink people’s blood and connect to their inner selves. Artonans did all kinds of similar seemingly unfathomable things. It was less a single science and more a set of sciences, arts, and historical arcana passed down from long-dead wizards.

Azure Rabbit seemed to coat him in a layer of magic that gave him a boost as he kicked off things with close metaphysical relationships to the soil of the planet he was on. It did not care what he thought the ground was at all; its own definition seemed to be right at the heart of the trait’s design, and it would not budge.

Alden could put up with it. It was maybe going to help him out here.

I’d better be right, or I’m going to break an ankle and have to crawl back to the lab.

Even if the trait had defied his attempts to perceive it into submission, he had gotten stronger control over it, just like he had with Let Me Take Your Luggage. But unlike the complicated skill, the trait didn’t have much in the way of consciously adjustable settings. It was pretty much just on or off, and he still couldn’t activate it unless the skill was in use.

He flexed the portion of his authority that had been made into the trait and recalled how confused he’d been a few months ago when he managed it and then had the un-creepy/more personal space feeling he couldn’t define.

That’s funny. It’s so clear now that it’s just me asserting my authority more strongly. It’s hard to remember what it actually felt like before I understood.

“All right,” he said to the fuzzy black and white world around him. “Walking seems to work like I thought it would. Let’s try running.”

When he took the first few swift steps, he knew it was the right decision. He kicked off the ground, and it felt almost just like it had on that first run to the lab. Maybe he was leaving trails of shallow holes in his wake, but who cared what the ground behind you looked like?

I’ve always thought the original skill description was terrible.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“You are lighter on your feet when your skills are in use” hasn’t fit it well at all until now. But even if this isn’t actual lightness it’s kind of working out that way for me.

If not for the heavy backpack full of equipment he hoped would help him right the car that he hoped would work, the run would have even been comfortable. The inconvenience of wearing rigged night vision glasses was balanced against the lack of obstacles. With so much of the grass gone, there was nothing but ground for miles and miles ahead of him.

He cast aside the metal rod and sprinted.

How do I feel? he asked himself with every step. How long could I do this for? How long will my legs hold out, my authority, me?