Chapter 107

Luke supposed it wasn’t unusual for a hotel to have a bar somewhere in the building. People liked to drink, hotels liked making money, so it made sense to him that they’d try to tap their current customers for some extra income. It hadn’t really been all that relevant to him, what with the whole being underage and not going on too many family vacations. The bars he’d visited with his older siblings had been more ‘trashy locals and cheap liquor’ than they had been ‘sophisticated world travelers’ or ‘dads needing a break from family vacation.’

Aros was different. Every town, no matter how small, had what he would term as a tavern. Usually there’d be two or three, even in the villages. The bigger taverns were also inns, but there were plenty of taverns that were only taverns. And when he considered how little variety there was in stuff like available food, it kind of stood out to him that no matter where he stopped, there were always plenty of options on tap.

Once he’d noticed that and started paying attention, he’d realized that there were more places to get drunk than there were to pray at, and this was a world that had actual, real deities who provided proof of their existence. Yet, somehow, outside of Valtira and probably Kazos, he had yet to see a church making a regular appearance anywhere.

There were little shrines sometimes, roadside things that basically looked like wind chimes strung up on an open-faced box, except the chimes were planks of wood that probably had the names of the Pantheon painted on them once upon a time. Weird. Luke would have thought that the gods cared about their shrines being ruined by the weather, or about the lack of churches to worship them, or just a general absence of being in people’s lives outside of major cities.

It was almost like they didn’t give a fuck. Like, at all.

Luke found the idea that the gods existed and had power, but didn’t care to exercise it throughout most of the world to be kind of suspicious. Was it that they were lazy, or was it not worth the effort for some other reason? Or was it that they couldn’t? That whole Covenant excuse had always seemed like bullshit to him anyway, not that he was complaining.

“You ever notice we never see a church anywhere we go?” he said casually as they got close enough to the village that she could start making out the individual buildings there too.

“Is that a problem for you?” Zea asked.

“No, just curious. Seems like something I might want to be aware of, given my… relationship… with the church.”

“I mean, I’m sure the whole Pantheon hates your guts, but you’re really only dealt with the Church of Hestoc in Valtira. Maybe those squirrels might worship Nuvari.”

“Uh, right. Reminds me which ones those are again,” Luke said.

“God of Civilization and Goddess of Nature.”

“Right, yeah, so this Hestoc guy should be all about all these little towns, right? That’s civilization popping up, spreading out and taming the wilderness. Why doesn’t he have his own little church in every town promoting the ideals of cutting down trees, murdering the natives, and growing corn?”

“What’s corn?” Zea said.

“Not important to the discussion. It’s just farming. Point is, this guy is a deity, he has his thing that he’s in charge of, but I don’t see him doing anything with it. Why not?”

“I don’t know. I’m not a philosopher. My learning starts and ends with ‘stay the fuck away from the streets around the church. They don’t like seeing the poors around and are happy to do something about it.’”

“It’s just weird, is all.”

“I wouldn’t worry about it that much. I think there’s an inn over there,” Zea said, changing the subject and pointing to the side of the village with the well. “That three story one. Big stable for the middle of town if it’s not.”

The pair changed directions slightly to head straight for the potential inn, which was exactly what Zea had predicted. A sign hanging from a post above the door proclaimed it to be the ‘Full Thatcher,’ whatever that meant. Maybe it was a translation problem between the Ostari writing and Thalian. Or maybe it was a local joke that he just didn’t get.

Zea, who’d been attracting stares from the few people out and about on the streets as they walked, stopped the bartender cold when she walked through the door. He said something in what Luke assumed was also Ostari, to which she answered haltingly. He caught their fake names in there, but not much else.

Annoyed at being unable to understand what was going on, he once again considered dumping 5 AP for the language. Zea only had 1 rank and she was doing fine with it. Probably. Maybe not, considering the look on the bartender’s face. Then she started counting out coins and Luke got it. They were doing what she referred to as haggling, and which Luke thought of as channeling her inner Karen.

He’d be embarrassed if he understood a word of it. Zea was vicious when it came to her haggling, but everyone seemed to expect it in this world. Instead, he just stood their blandly and tried not to think of all the times he’d just agreeably handed over whatever amount of money the vendor had asked for.

“Come on,” she said after she parted with a single silver coin. “Got rooms for the evening, a meal for both of us, and we can use the bath house.”

“Oh, good. Rooms first?”

“Yep. Then I’m claiming the first bath. You can watch our stuff until I get back.”

Luke was surprised. “You think people are going to try to steal from us in a place like this?”

“No, but do you want to risk it?”

He recalled the amaril hide and how valuable Zea said it was. Hell, she’d put so many enchantments on that bag to keep it fresh until they could get it to someone who could process it that even the bag itself was probably worth a nice bit of money.

“Fair enough. I’ll babysit our stuff while you get a bath.”

* * *

For the first time in what felt like a year, Luke was thoroughly clean and had eaten a meal that included things like seasoning and butter. Zea was a decent cook, but given what they’d had to work with, their diets had consisted of a lot of dry food. It was nice to have an approximation of civilization again, even if it was still beyond rustic by his standards.

Zea had somehow managed to bully the bartender, or rather, innkeeper, into loaning her a lantern, which she’d set on the floor next to her while she unpacked a dozen razor-sharp prongs from her bag. Luke watched from the bed, curious, while he listened to the sounds of the village around them. He needed to get into the habit of paying attention to what his ears and nose were telling him now that he couldn’t feel approaching XP anymore.

In a way, it was discomforting to have lost that sense, but the looks he’d gotten had been more curious or confused than afraid or hostile, so he supposed it was a win. Still, if a bloodline purification would allow him to start sensing XP from other creatures while hiding his own, he’d call that a solid win. System, of course, wouldn’t tell him.

It didn’t seem like he could turn it on or off either, so for the time being, Luke was stuck being XP-blind. [XP Mask] was such a weird skill, the only one he’d found so far that had a clear drawback to it. He was pretty sure it was because it was a bloodline skill, and since his wasn’t pure, none of the abilities were working at full strength. [Analyze]only showed him basic information, too. It would seem like it should have at least showed him the target’s skills along with their stats, maybe even everything he could see on his own status screen.

“Ah, damn it,” Zea said, flinching and dropping the prong she’d been working on to the floor. “Cut myself again.”

“Do you want me to hold it for you while you work on it?” he asked. Even if it did cut him, he had far more stamina to heal up from it.

“No, it’s fine. Besides, you might interfere with the enchantment.”

“What exactly are you trying to do?”

She glanced up at where he was laying on the bed and said, “You really want to know?”

“Sure, why not? It’s something you care about, so if it’s important to you, it’s important to me.”

“Well, alright. Come here. I’ll try to explain it as much as I can. Without [Mana Sight], I can only walk you through the general idea, not the specifics.”

“I’m sure the specifics would go over my head anyway.”

“Give yourself some credit,” she told him. “You’re not dumb.”

Luke just shrugged as he sat down behind her. She scooted back to snuggle up against his chest and said, “Okay, so you know this shit is super sharp, right? Like, it can pierce steel easily, and even the edge can cut skin.”

“Right.” He was extremely aware of how damn sharp those antlers had been, having been the one who’d killed their previous owner.

“Well, you know how they don’t look like they’re sharp though? I mean, it’s got a point on it like a normal antler, but there’s no edge here. So how’s it cut through anything, right? That’s the magic part. It has a kind of… cutting aura, I guess. It cuts because it wants to.”

“Okay?” Luke wasn’t quite sure how that worked, but if Zea said so, he wasn’t going to argue.

“Right, well, what I’m doing with this enchantment is taking that cutting aura and slaving it to an anchor piece so that I can manipulate it. Then I’ll be able to change its shape, size, flexibility, sharpness, pretty much anything I want.”

Luke vaguely recalled how the moose had damn near gored him despite the antlers not actually touching him. If he was understanding Zea’s explanation correctly, she was trying to get the individual prong pieces to do the same thing, except under her control.

“Are you… are you making a magic invisible sword?”

“What? No, of course not.” Zea gestured to the nine other fragments of razor prong sitting on the floor. “I’m making a magic invisible whip.”

Luke remembered a monster he’d seen Curt kill in a video game once, a kind of giant water serpent that still had its spine inside it, spaced out along its length. He was picturing Zea’s proposed magic weapon as something similar, with each prong fragment spaced out along an invisible razor-sharp fishing line.

“That’s so cool,” he said. “Are you going to need to pick up a skill like [Whip Mastery] to use it?”

“Nah. It’s not a real whip. I’ll control it with the enchantments. At least, I will if I ever finish carving the runes into the fucking things. This would be so much easier with a full workbench. Wouldn’t be slicing my hand open every five seconds either.”

“Here,” Luke said, picking up the prong and holding it between his fingers. He could feel it scraping against his skin, like he was holding a jagged shard of glass instead of a smooth bone-textured piece of horn. It couldn’t slice through him, not with his stamina. “Move my arm so that I’m holding it exactly where you need it. I won’t let go, I promise.”

“You know if you move while I’m writing on this, the whole piece will be worthless, right?”

“Mmhmm. Go ahead, try to move it. Push on it as hard as you can.”

Zea did as he asked and found it didn’t budge, no matter what. She even accidentally cut her hand again trying to force it. Then she adjusted his arm so that he was holding it right in front of her, nodded to herself, and said, “Okay, here we go.”

Slowly, one delicate line at a time, Zea etched the enchanting runes into the bone.