Dialysis Book: Chapter 12: Preparations

You could tell it was noon from the sunlight streaming in from the small holes in the roof.  I'd been asleep for less than 4 hours, probably much less, but somehow that was enough.  I yawned mightily and reached over for my temporary bedmate.

Kailee was not the most attractive woman I'd ever bedded, but she certainly was the most vigorous.  I wondered if tava might have a bit more than simple caffeine in it, but I wasn't complaining.

I ran my hand down her short hairy back until she turned over and licked me on the face.

"Bah," I screamed, jerking back.

"What is wrong," asked Shade.

"I was expecting a woman," I said, wiping the fur off of my face.

"Oh, she left a few minutes ago.  The door was open and the fire was out so I came here," said Shade.  "Blankets are a poor substitute for a fire, but I enjoyed the cuddles."

I scratched Shade on the head.  "You realize this is a bit weird because you can talk, right?"

"Well, I don't think so and you snore," replied Shade as Kailee stepped back into the room, frowning.  She sat down at the foot of the bed, reading a note.

"What's up," I asked after a few seconds of her silence.  She paused, looked up at me and then scratched Shade on top of his head.

"I got a magical quest request," said Kailee, holding the letter.  I couldn't quite read it, but what I could see looked quite ornate.  I wondered if all the quests were written up so fancy, or if it was just this one.

"Do you need me to do it?" I asked.

"Well, sure but it is suicidal," said Kailee with a shrug.  "So I wasn't going to ask."

"It pays 10 gold pieces," I said. I noticed one part of the letter and vacations were not cheap.

"It pays the guild 10 gold pieces, we usually take 50%," replied Kailee.

"That's a pretty big cut," I replied.

"Do you have any idea how much treasure you guys get when you go wandering in dungeons," replied Kailee.  "If you are relying on quest pay outs you aren't looting enough."

She had a point, Shade's casual looting of the goblin warren netted us more than 3 gold pieces and I didn't want to imagine what would happen if we put up a dedicated effort though I had no desire to go back into that terrible place.

"Where is the quest?"

"Goblin warren," said Kailee.

Of course.

"Nope," whispered Spivy, she was curled up behind Shade, apparently deciding that a bed that large deserved more than one occupant.  "As your helper, that quest is too dangerous."

I glanced over at Kailee, who either was unaware of Spivy's presence or steadfastly ignoring her with great effort.  I couldn't tell which.

"Whelp, I'm not too keen on doing that, not for five gold pieces at any rate," I said.

"That's fine, I wasn't going to send you," replied Kailee.  "I can't keep losing adventurers, and this quest screams party wipe."

That was settled, and I laid back down using Shade as a pillow.  The dog yawned, finding little need to talk about silly quests when sleeping could be done.  Spivy hid herself a bit better.  I put thoughts of the quest out of my mind, this was a vacation after all.  I was going to relax, even though that was a bit tricky with my limited budget and 5 gold was 5 gold.

"Out of curiosity, what was the quest," I asked.

"Find a magic rock, it is supposed to be in the goblin's temple," said Kailee.

I brought up the map Shade captured, and found the temple.  Shade grunted so I shared the map with him.

Shade snorted, "Oh, that place, I wonder if it was the rock on the dias."

"Dias," asked Kailee, "No, it is in the goblin temple, that is really far into the goblin warren.  I have a map of the warren and the temple is practically on the other side of the warren through all of their main defenses."

"It is not that far away from the secret rear entrance we escaped from," said Shade before I could shut him up.

"What?" asked Kailee, looking at me curiously.

"Goblins tried to kidnap us.  We ended up in their warren and had to fight to escape,"I said.

"That explains how  you are so utterly clueless," said Kailee as she stood up, "Can you show me your map?"

"No," I said.

"Yes," replied Spivy and the tube we found yesterday appeared in my hand.

"You have a mapper?" said Kailee examining the tube.  "Looks like the crystal and map were removed though."

I realized that there were three parts of the mapper.  There was a tube that looked like it would fit a healthy sized map in it.  There was also a slot that would fit a standard skill shard.  Finally there was a place for a core.

I happened to have all three items, though I wasn't sure about the skill shard.

The map of the goblin warren and a rat core appeared in my hand.  I slid the map into the tube, though it did hang out a bit.  When I inserted the core, the map vanished.  I would have reacted, but Kailee was watching me like nothing interesting was going on, meaning that it probably was supposed to act like that.

As I held the tube, I was aware that there were actually two maps inside of it.  The goblin map that I just inserted and a second map I didn't recognize.

"Do you have a skill shard," asked Kailee.

I felt a tugging on my ear and Spivy asked, "Would you like to remove your mapping skill shard?"

"You can remove shards," I asked.

"Of course," said Kailee, shaking her head.  "You are not from here."

"Yes, please remove the shard," I said grumpily.  I felt a twinge in my soul, and then the mapping skill I was used to being always active suddenly snapped off.  My minimap was gone.  I looked to my palm and the skill shard was there.

I slid the shard into the tube and nothing happened.  Kailee looked at me patiently.

"What am I missing," I said.

"Essence," said Spivy.

Of course.  I focused on the item and found it easy enough to push my essence into, and push I did.  The item drank up every bit of essence I sent it's way, like a starving baby attached to the teet of my essence.  I tried to stop the connection, but the tube was not having that.  For several seconds I felt my body shriveling as all of my essence was sucked away, and then it just stopped.

The item was still there, using a trickle of essence, but only a trickle.  I'd bonfired, but not long enough to burn me out.  Kailee blinked at me several times.

"You don't need to do a full power activation of a mapping tube, but good work," she said.

"I'm so embarrassed," groaned Spivy.

"What do you mean," I whispered, a trick considering Kailee was watching me.

"You only need a drop of essence to activate an item like a mapper, you dumped your whole load into it.  That is really only necessary for more powerful items and certainly not a mapper," groaned Spivy.

"Sorry," I said.  Kailee giggled.  Spivy groaned again.

I held onto the mapper and felt my revised capacities.  The mapping skill was now configured to the device, rather than my person.  It was being fed energy from the magical core, not from my essence, though I did have to use a bit of my essence to activate it.  When activated it was equivalent to me running the mapping skill at medium power.

I couldn't get the level of detail when I was running it at full power mode, but I also didn't have to spend any real essence to gain the benefit.  Spending essence was strange, and for minor things you did it unconsciously for the most part meaning that I could keep this up pretty much forever.

I always kept some essence flowing to my body, which allowed me a slight improvement to my physical abilities.  Presumably I was doing the same thing to my mind, but I couldn't ever sense that link.

The new link to my mapper was only slightly different.  I could feel the energy flowing into the area surrounding me, but it was contained in the device and I even felt some backflow if I overcharged the item.

Kailee looked at me expectantly.

"How do I work this," I said finally.

"You've never used a mapper," said the guild master curiously.  "Wow, well just press the button."

There was a button.  I pressed it and a map projected onto the bed, and while a rumpled bed with a dog on it was useful for certain things, reading a map was not one of them.  Shade’s nose was in the middle of a large, three dimensional castle.  I moved the projection to the floor, giving me a clean view of a map I did not recognize.

"That's the city of Dominus," said Kailee, "It is in the elven dominion.  Not sure how it is relevant here."

"Oops, sorry about that," I said.

That was the other map in the mapper.  I concentrated on the inventory of the mapper and flipped it over to the goblin map, causing everything from here to the warren to become visible.  I concentrated and zoomed the projection in on the warren.

Kailee examined it for a long moment then pulled out a mapper of her own, projecting a second map down on top of mine.  She had details that I didn't have, including a lot of specific details towards the main entrance of the warren.

"The previous guild master launched several expeditions into the goblin warren trying to clear it out.  He eventually gave up, but he did gather up quite a bit of intel about the place including several maps of the upper floors," said Kailee.

She concentrated and a line shot from the entrance to the room I designated as the temple.  The path from the main entrance went through multiple rooms that were just labeled with skulls, and one room that was labeled with five skulls.

"What are those, a danger rating," I asked.

"Number of adventurers who died," replied Kailee.  There were over thirty skulls in the warren map.

"That might be a bit too dangerous," I said.

"Which is why I didn't want to send you," replied Kailee.  As she spoke her map expanded to contain my map.  My map likewise expanded to cover the information she was providing but I noticed her's updated much faster.

"You have a better skill shard than I do," I asked.

"Mine is heroic, yours must just be a mortal shard," she said as she examined the path from the rear entrance.  "This might be doable.  At minimum, if you were smart you could get away without much trouble before you got in too deep."

"Possibly," I said, considering the heist seriously for the first time.

"Well, let me read up on the client, then we could go to the storeroom.  I might have something that could help," said Kailee as she stood up and walked out of the room, taking her mapper.

"Well, that's a pickle," said Spivy as she fluttered around.

"What do you mean," I asked.

"She is right, it might be possible," said Spivy as she landed on the floor in the map projection.  "We sneak in through the back entrance, which will be lightly guarded because they know I left.  Then we creep through the back tunnels we used and you mapped.  That brings us here."

She pointed to a section of tunnels where the map got slightly less detailed.  I realized that was where Shade had moved away from me when chasing a goblin.

"Shade, what do you remember about the temple," I asked.

"Big room, lots of goblins with hats on.  They were talking to a rock in the middle of the room," said Shade.

The detail on the temple was half map and half what Shade gathered.  The room was massive, capable of holding a tremendous number of goblins.  There was a dias in the middle of the room with a clearly visible rock on top of it.

"The map mainly gathers information from your senses," said Spivy.  "The skill gives you a limited form of echolocation, so just walking around provides some degree of detail.  Most of the detail comes from what you look at."

"That rock is pretty far in," I said.  "It also looks attached to something."

"I could steal that," said Shade.  "If I can fit it into my mouth, I can make it work."

"I've heard that before," chuckled Spivy.

I stared at the fairy, "You aren't helping."

"I quit, remember, I’m just here assisting you as I see fit," said Spivy.   "The rock is attached to the dias.  You'd have to be able to pick locks to get in there."

"I can't do that," I said.

"But I can," replied Spivy as I stared at her.  "I'm a criminal, remember.  I know lots of thieving skills."

"But can you help us?" I asked.

"As a helper fairy, no," said Spivy.  "But I'm not just a helper fairy.  I am a strong, independent, shining woman who don't need no system telling me what I can't do."

"So we can do this," I said.

"With the right equipment," said Spivy.

"And Kailee will pick the wrong stuff," I said.

Shade started sniffing, "I think the storeroom is down the hall, it smells musty there."

I grabbed the mapper and my cloak before walking down the hallway to a locked door.  If the door had actually fit into the frame, it might have even been secure.  I pulled for a moment and it popped open.

The storeroom was a small room full of nonsense, gizmos and other objects that didn’t make much sense.

“Are those dog shoes,” I asked.

“Yes, Shade is not the only companion around,” said Spivy.  “They are designed to increase traction on uneven surfaces, so if Shade had a charge attack he would be able to do it at a lower essence cost.”

“I do not have a charging skill,” said Shade uncomfortably.

“Or climb something more easily,” whispered Spivy.

“We could use those,” I said.  Spivy shrugged and handed them over while she continued searching.

“I do not like shoes,” said Shade unhappily as I presented him the item.  “They are tiny foot prisons.”

“This will help you climb more easily,” I said.

Shade considered that, then snorted, “Still, I refuse.  And besides you have to put them on me and they look complicated.”

“Actually you can do that,” said Spivy.  “Just put them into your inventory and summon them onto your feet at need.”

Shade looked curious for a moment then tapped his nose on the dog shoes.  They vanished and reappeared moments later on his feet.

“Wait, how did he resize those so quickly,” I said.

“It was not hard, I feel sorry you had so much trouble with your pants,” said Shade.

“Leather must be harder to manipulate than steel,” I said.

“It isn’t, and it's not even close,” said Spivy as she rummaged through another box.

“You aren’t helping,” I said, finding a box and pulling out a contraption that had spots for two cores on it.

“Ohh, a skill trainer,” said Spivy.  “For a strength based skill.  Might work on your Light Thrust, but you aren't really a strength based fighter.”

I glanced over at Shade.

“Neight am I.  I am a lover, not a fighter,” said Shade.  “Also a poop ninja.”

“Just a regular ninja,” growled Spivy as she pulled out a piece of cloth.  “This might be fun.  This is a cloak of Shadows.  Amplifies Shadow based skills to some extent.”

“That could be handy,” I said.

Spivy blew the dust off and only a chunk of it remained.  “Shadowsilk, and it would If it wasn’t damaged.”

“Still, it would make a better bandana,” I said, looking around for Shade.  He was hiding, again.

“I am not hiding,” said Shade as I looked around.  I looked up, he was attached to the ceiling.  “I am climbing!”

“Climb over here, I’m replacing your bandana,” I said and Shade walked down the wall, stopping at the halfway point.  “It is harder to balance here than it was hanging down from the roof.”

“That’s based on how the equipment works,” said Spivy tossing several broken bits into one box while I tied the Shadowsilk bandana onto Shade’s neck.  He hopped down and went into his Shadow form.

“He’s getting better at that,” I said as Shade’s wispy body began poking around the room.  Even knowing where he was, I was having difficulty tracking him.  My eyes seemed to just flow off of him.

“It should evolve pretty soon,” said Spivy casually as she picked another box to root through.

“Skills evolve, into what,” I asked.

“Take your Light Thrust skill, that started off as a pretty basic light element based attack,” said Spivy.

“Light is an element,” I said.

“Elements are basic expressions of an aspect, so yes, fire, earth, water, air, light and darkness are all basic expressions of an aspect,” said Spivy.

“So there aren’t only four elements,” I said.

“Gods no,” replied Spivy pulling her head out of the box, she started counting on her fingers.  “I can think of at least forty, and there could be more depending on how you define combined aspects like Shade’s Shadow abilities.”

“My dog is an aspect?” I asked.

Spivy’s head twitched slightly, “The core you buffoon.”

“That makes more sense, if Shade had an aspect it would be poop,” I said.

“I am a poop ninja,” said Shade from the ceiling.

“I hate you both,” said Spivy as she flew over to a shelf and started going through more stuff, tossing garbage out.  Most of the time she flung whatever she found at me, and I ended up dropping the obvious junk into another box.

“So you were talking about evolving skills,” I said.

Spivy sighed, but she liked to lecture so after a moment she continued, “Skills evolve partially on how you use them and partially on your belief of how they should function.  You seem to think light cuts for some reason so it is doing a pretty good job at that.”

“Lasers in my world are used for cutting,” I said.

“Neat, what is a laser,” asked Spivy.

“Light amplified by the stimulated emission of radiation,” I replied.

“You made most of those words up,” she said, looking over at me.  “Or your language is really weird.”

“Bit of both,” I said.  “But lasers are used by crafters to cut things very precisely.”

She nodded, “Well, that explains that then.  Your light thrust will probably evolve into laser thrust as you develop it.  The blade will get even sharper and let you cut through more things.”

“That’s cool,” I said, pulling out my detached spearhead and concentrating while carefully gripping the tang.  The edges of the blade glowed dimly, but at this range I could see the hard edges of the light.

I poked a flat part with some garbage that used to be a dagger.  With some force I could make a slight mark in the light that caused a brilliant fractal pattern for a few moments before it cleared up.

Then I touched the flat part, staying well away from the edges.  The skill caused a sheath of light to form around the spearhead, but it liked flat planes for the most part so the light generated spearhead was both simpler and much cooler than the real head.

The edges were sharp as hell though.  They were literally sharper than a razer and could take a lot more punishment.  They bunched up rather than nicked, and always tended to clear away after a few seconds.

“This is harder than it was,” I said, releasing the skill.

“That’s a combination of factors,” said Spivy, pulling out a he-man style chestplate.  It was made mostly of leather, but had a metal pentagon in the middle with an embossed dragon.  She started adjusting the straps, pulling them short.  Way too short for me.

“Are you going to find anything I can use,” I asked as Spivy tossed the item to Shade.  He snatched it out of midair and then appeared with the item around his chest.  It looked dapper on him, combined with the bandana.

“I look awesome,” he announced, then promptly started to clean his bits.

“He is really going to town down there,” said Spivy.

“I know, I envy that dog,” I said unhappily.  Spivy continued looking around the room for several more seconds and then finally shook her head.

“To answer your question, this place is pretty much picked clean,” said Spivy.  “What is in here is junk.  My working hypothesis is that the last guild master probably looted the place himself before leaving.”

“Great,” I said, considering how to clean the armor we’d found.  It was disgusting, but better than my badly damaged leathers.

“Anyway, your skills evolve as you use them and how you desire them to develop,” said Spivy.  “There are some basic properties for elements, of course.  You can’t make ‘cold’ fire, but you can make ‘less hot’ fire, or hotter fire.  Hotter fire is easier by the way.  You are using the light element, which illuminates and is normally capable of becoming a decent edge.  You’ve decided that it can cut through almost anything, so it is trying to do that.”

“Well, it seems to be working,” I said.

“Point, I didn’t know light could actually get that sharp,” said Spivy.  “It is usually used as a support element, or as a ranged caster supporting core.  You don’t usually see light being used offensively.  Heck, even in items they usually just use it to make things brighter.”

“So is that why it is costing more?” I asked.

“Probably, I’ll run the numbers next time you are using it but the harder your work an element the more essence it takes to run,” said Spivy.

“There are numbers,” I asked.

“Of course there are numbers,” said Spivy fluttering around.  “Your Light Thrust Skill, rank one, is currently 87% developed and will evolve when it reaches 100%.”

I blinked several times, “That doesn’t sound useful,” I said.

“It gets worse, lots of adventurers want to go through their character sheets constantly so I’d be reading off your stats and skills to you as you advanced,” said Spivy.

“I take it that’s not happening,” I said.

“I never found it particularly useful,” said Spivy as she rapped her knuckles on the bookshelf.  “But if you want to focus on reading system prompts you can learn to do it yourself.  I’d be happy to take that load off my shoulders.”

I still occasionally got flashes of odd symbols and I concentrated on a cluster of them, then realized how pointless that was.  I was on vacation, I didn’t need to learn how to fully develop my skills, I had Coach Spivy for that.  She’d tell me what I needed to do, and I’d just do that.

Hopefully essence allowed me to fortify my liver after I got paid.

While I pondered Spivy was  flying to the corners of the room.  She was carefully examining everything and punching stuff.  Eventually she started down the walls knocking gently.

“Looking for secret doors,” I asked.

“Sometimes you find a hollow in the wall,” she replied, knocking several more times.  “But you need a spearhead before we get to the goblin warrens, and the alternative is unpleasant.”

“Which would be,” I said.

“I’d have to convert one of those shortswords into one using essence,” said Spivy as her tiny shoulders slumped.  “You realize I quit because of shite like that, right?”

“I’m not asking you,” I said.

“I know, that’s why I’m going to do it,” she said. "In the meantime I have some things for you to do."

***

It was late afternoon by the time we were almost ready to leave.  Shade, the super dog, was patrolling the guild house when Spivy finally woke up.  She looked miserable.

“I tried bonfiring my essence,” I said as she moaned piteously.

“Yeah, that probably bought you at least thirty minutes,” groaned Spivy.  Her eyes were bloodshot and she pulled a waterskin out of her inventory and started drinking.  She emptied the whole thing while I waited.  It was fairy sized, but I still wondered where all of it went.

"Kailee is pissed about you tearing through her storeroom," I said.

"Meh," replied Spivy, smacking her lips loudly.

“I affixed the spear head, and used nails this time,” I said.

“Countersunk,” she stated, looking around then finally at me.

“Yes, the socket fit perfectly,” I said, showing her the spear.  Spivy flew over shakily, landing roughly on my arm where she examined the head.

“Great, potions,” she asked.

“Traded some herbs that Shade gathered up and bought healing and essence potions,” I said, offering her an essence potion.

“Fairies can’t drink potions,” she said, pushing it away.  “Our metabolism is too fast.”

"I ran out of gold before I could get the leather armor fixed," I said finally.

"You need to learn about meditation," said the fairy grumpily.  "And now’s the time."

“What about Shade?”

“I already know how to meditate on my powers,” said Shade, like a traitor.

“He figured it right out, are you sure you are the clever one,” said Spivy.

“He doesn’t have anything else going on,” I said back, biting down on every word.  “Can we just get started?”

"Of course,' groaned Spivy.  "I want you to think of something stupid and calming, like a waterfall, or a good night's sleep."

"Okay," I replied.

"Now, imagine there isn't a dumb human and a stupid dog being loud while you are doing it," she said.

"I'm not sure this will be useful," I began until she pinched my ear.

"I'm talking, you are listening," growled Spivy.  "Think, calm, happy thoughts.  You are  stone, a quiet stone, that lives in a quiet hole, with quiet rocks around your quiet self."

I inhaled to speak, but Spivy gripped my ear so tightly I wasn't sure it wasn't starting to tear.  The pain, more than anything, caused me to look inward as I attempted to escape it.  As I searched, I found something.

My cores were there, glowing radiances in the center of my being.  I never formally  meditated intentionally, though I had been reflective at times.  That gave me some idea of what my inner soul felt like and these were certainly new.

The two cores were floating there, and with my essence I could poke at each of them separately, sort of.  My class core was a massive glowing font of power and I could see the aspect of light bonded to the side, burning into it.  A new core was evolving out of the mixture, with its ultimate purpose yet undecided.

The companion core seemed stronger than the other cores for an instant, but that feeling stopped and was replaced by a normal flow of power.  Still, I focused on the core attempting to feel its pulse, so to speak.

As I searched the core, I felt a detached core somewhere else.  I realized it was Shade, marching around the building in his quest for herbs.  I couldn't actually feel Shade though, I was sensing his other cores though the companion core.

Unlike my class core, which felt rough, the companion core felt smooth.  I could tell that there was no place on it to put an aspect.  Worse, on my class core I could tell that placing an additional aspect right now would do more harm than good though I couldn’t quite feel why.

Then I felt a strong urge to test my essence.  I started gathering it up, pushing it out, filling individual muscles with it.  I realized that I didn't need to make all of me strong, I could just use it on an arm, or a hand.  I also found a considerable chunk of my essence bolstering my mental faculties.  It had been there since I realized I had essence, but it was so deeply intertwined into who I was that I didn't even recognize it was tied up.

I attempted to pull some essence out of my mind, only to suddenly feel weaker.  My resolve started to crumble instantly.  I shoved the essence back there, but nearly half of my total essence was being consumed powering my mind and personality.

Finally, I felt a calling to push my essence out of my body.  My essence wasn't limited to strictly my innards.  I possessed a small field of essence that surrounded me and bound me.  All living things possessed essence, and while I couldn't interact I could now sense the relative amount of power of a thing by concentrating on it.

The moss underneath my butt.  The small worm.  The overwhelming power of the pissed off fairy.

"Hurry the hell up," yelled Spivy directly into my ear.

"Yeah, okay, that was weird," I said.

"Good, now that you understand your essence a bit better, let's fix that armor," said Spivy.  "I have a trick that an old badger showed me."