Siege State
Chapter Thirty-Five: Hunter-Gatherer

When Tom awoke the next morning Scriber was already gone.

Val and the enchanter had stayed up long into the night, talking in low tones, discussing the Deep, and the Hunters, newly arrived monsters, and friends long dead.

Val was making porridge when he stirred, and by the time he had rolled out of bed, she was handing him a bowl. Thanking her, he took a stool.

“What did you think of Scriber?” she asked him.

“He seems well enough,” Tom responded. “Absurdly generous though. Made me wonder what hidden hooks are in his gifts, if I’m being honest.”

“There are none, and it’s part of why he’s so well respected out here. A large part of why he’s so odd too. There aren’t many people so generous, let alone Hunters. Not that he sees it that way. To him anything that can further his craft is worth its weight in soulsteel.”

Tom just nodded, a little absently, caught up in his thoughts again.

“So, an axe, eh?” Val asked, changing the subject. She seemed to have a good handle on Tom’s moods, and was becoming increasingly proficient at cajoling him into speech.

“Yeah. You think it’s a good idea, don’t you? I just think it would provide some much needed power to fall back on.”

“I do. So long as you can use it just as well.”

“Not as well as a sword, but more than well enough for actual fighting. I’m at least as good with it as the spear, I’d say.”

“A wise choice then,” she said, nodding sagely. “I was wondering if you would notice the weakness and do something about it, or whether you would cling to the sword.”

He arched an eyebrow at her over his porridge. He was keen to hear her reasoning.

“The style you’re developing is effective, keeping enemies at length with the spear and wearing them down. You’ve got one major problem, though: you’ve got no movement abilities. That’s actually a good reason to use a spear - it helps you control distance. But when an enemy is fast enough to get inside your reach, or too tough to be damaged by it, and you can’t run, or reposition…”

“Then I drop the spear and grab the axe, relying on my defensive abilities to mitigate any damage I take while working in close. Sacrificing health and control for far more damage.”

“Exactly.” she said, sounding satisfied. “There’s just one problem with that. Learning how much damage you can take without dying, while also pacing yourself to finish a fight is going to be hard without getting yourself killed. If I were you, I’d be hoping one of my last two skills is a movement skill, or a healing skill. You desperately need one.”

Tom agreed, and said as much, “Some sort of high damage skill wouldn’t do too badly in a pinch either. Something to help close out those fights quicker.”

Val partly conceded the point with a head wobble. “True, but I think you’d rather be safer and have longer fights.”

Tom wasn’t sure what he wanted out of his last two skills. He had felt at many points during his week’s training with Val that a movement skill would be useful, but something told him it wouldn’t really have made any of his fights that much easier. There was no need to reposition when you could control space, and his spear and Sesame did an excellent job of it. For that matter, he still had two familiars to manifest, and they would hopefully make it even easier.

There were still a few major skills types that he had not manifested and, at this stage, with only two slots left - not including his pinnacle skill - he would not manifest all of them.

Surge skills were incredibly rare, so he would be surprised if he manifested one. He had no sensory skills, which were relatively common, as were channelled skills. Auras, while less common, were still usually found in most fall skillsets. Control skills, about as rare as surges, were also an option, but he had reservations as to how effective one would be for Survival.

He’d definitely like some kind of new active skill, whether it be healing or defensive or offensive. At the moment, his mana pool never emptied, and that was the same as leaving an advantage on the floor in a fight.

It wasn’t necessarily the end of the world if he didn’t get another active skill, as he supposed he could just use his mana through enchantments, but he’d rather not be any more indebted to Scriber than he had to be.

“Right then, let’s get to it,” Val said, collecting their bowls. “We’ve got a drake to track.”

Tom returned to his bedroll to get ready and found himself frozen in his tracks. His gear… he heard Val chuckling from behind him.

“Was wondering when you’d notice.”

The breastplate Tom had gone to pick up was covered in tiny runes. His bracers and greaves too. His spear, lying on the ground near his bedroll, had enchantments running in long, perfectly straight lines, all the way up and down the shaft, and scrawled in beautiful flowing patterns on the blade. The leather grip hadn’t been enchanted, but he could see it had been removed and rewound during the process. He was stunned.

“When did he do all this?” Tom asked.

Val just chuckled at him. “Most of it was finished before you even went to bed.”

“I didn’t notice …a …thing” Tom replied lamely, trailing off as he remembered Scriber’s army of industrious enchanting mice.

“Good rule of thumb for Scriber; most of the enchantments you get from him are not those you asked for. The man literally cannot stop himself.”

Tom shook his head in disbelief, but had his armour on in short order, ready to head out. He was keen to learn more woodscraft, and to test out his new gear. He slipped his axe through a new leather loop that had been sewn onto his belt while he slept.

~~~~~

Mid morning found Tom and Val back at the same spot they had searched for drake sign yesterday.

As they searched, Val patiently explained to Tom what they saw. She taught him how to analyse a track, how to use it to tell how long ago it had been made, how big the creature was, how fast it was moving, and in what direction.

She showed him broken branches, and bruised leaves, and chips of bark taken out of tree trunks - all signs of various things having come and gone.

She pointed out flora all around them, explaining their myriad uses. Which wood was good for burning, and which would smoke. Which wood was strong, and which was rotten. How to tell which wood was dry on the inside, even if it looked wet without.

She had Sesame seek out scents in air, try to discern their meaning, and get better at passing that information along to Tom. Then she had him subsume his familiar, and identify scents himself.

She taught him the best ways to try and replace a source of water, like a stream or pond, and a handful of ways to replace it from other places. Certain trees held water cupped in thick leaves, or collected it in sections of their trunks after a rain. In specific areas, soil could be dug into, and water would leach up from the ground into the hole.

Tom learned several different types of mushrooms and berries and flowers, some of which he had eaten before, and their regular uses.

Val even briefly showed him how to construct a small shelter, and had him use his axe to cut branches for a makeshift roof, and more for a makeshift lining to sleep on. Even an inch or two of padding could make all the difference, she explained, as the body lost dramatic amounts of heat into the ground.

His new knife proved helpful throughout. It had durability, sharpness, and self-repair enchantments, and with it, he found many of the tasks Val had set him easy.

One such task was when she had him use a piece of twine and a bendy stick to make a snare. She further explained likely places to set it, but didn’t have him actually do so. They were on the move, after all, and weren’t likely to pass by here again. Not for several days, at least.

Before he knew it, it was late in the afternoon. Tom had rarely felt so engaged while learning. He applied himself to every lesson at the Academy: all their abstract theories and hypotheses. He had no other option, if he wanted to manifest, but this… it was the first time his lessons actually meant something in such a direct, visceral way. It was the first time he was learning something that made such an immediate, tangible difference to him. Not even the combat classes at the Academy came close, outmatched, as he usually was, by his Idealist sparring partners. Most importantly, it was the first time learning about things that he was truly interested in, that he enjoyed without reservation.

Val had stopped them, and was doing another round of having Sesame identify all the nearby scents, and then informing Tom. Tom then relayed that to Val, who verified it with Scorn and Smitten. When Tom mentioned that Sesame said there was an earthy, wet scent nearby that smelled strong, but not strong, Val tasked him with replaceing the source.

Tom thought about it for a moment, sending clarifying queries back and forth with Sesame. Eventually, he realised the bear meant something mana-attuned, giving off power, but not necessarily a strong scent.

Wet and earthy, Tom repeated. So, everything.

He let his eyes range about, playing through the lessons Val had taught him today. She was a fair teacher, and he didn’t think she’d set him an impossible task. It stood to reason, therefore, that something she had taught could help him with the mystery.

Suddenly, it came to him. Tom closed his eyes and breathed deep. Then he shut out his other senses, compartmentalising them and ignoring them. Then he focused on his skin.

As he had walked through the great walls of Wayrest he had noticed a strange pressure on him: mana, from the millions of enchantments in the stones. Now, he searched for anything that could feel similar.

He thought he noticed a faint pressure, light a bird’s breath, on his left cheek. He turned his head, slowly, slowly, until the pressure was right on the tip of his nose. Then he opened his eyes.

It took a moment for them to focus, and when they did, he was looking at a patch of forest exactly like any other. Trees, bushes, deadfall, nothing out of the ordinary. But he persisted, looking closer. He moved forward, slowly still, searching. And then he saw it.

A large, straight tree branch had fallen from the canopy, and was propped against another tree at a low angle. At one point along the branch, was a patch of nondescript, green hanging moss. He walked forward and touched it.

And promptly collapsed. The world seemed to press in on him. It felt like someone was shouting right in his ears, like he’d gone to sleep at darkest night and woken under a blaring sun, like a hundred steel spiders were crawling all over his skin. He was completely overwhelmed.

By the time he slowly started coming back to himself he was sitting on the ground. Through ringing in his ears he could vaguely hear Val.

“Tom! Tom, what’s happened? You’re okay, man. You’re alright.” She lightly jogged his shoulder, trying to get a response from him, and he realised she’d been doing it for minutes. As his vision resolved back into clarity, he found his wisp bobbing in front of him, the brown striations slowly revolving around the pink core.

Skill manifested.

Ideal Three (Classic): Survival.

Skill Three (Classic): Hunter-Gatherer (Passive (Sensory)).

Can sense nearby life force in the caster’s field of view. Can sense nearby concentrations of mana in the caster’s field of view. Allows caster access to an inventory in the caster’s World Wisp. Generates and places naturally occurring, mana-infused objects into the caster’s wisp inventory at random intervals.

The feeling was due to his skill manifesting. A sensory skill, but not just a sensory skill. He was ecstatic. Even now, he could feel Val, standing above him. And Sesame, and Scorn, and Smitten. And the trees, and bushes. And a small rodent, in the undergrowth nearly forty paces off, being trailed by a grass snake.

He had learned about bats in the academy, how their sight didn’t work so well in the dark, and so they used sound - small, rapid clicks - as they flew, as the basis for a new sense: echolocation. It seemed like this new skill did something similar, using Tom’s sight as a basis to return more information to him, but allowing him to feel that information as a new sense instead of simply seeing it.

The best part of the skill was surely the inventory. He could count the Ideals that could manifest something similar on one hand. Space was the famous example, of course, but on the odd occasion people with mercantile Ideals would manifest one too. A personal spatial storage space would be incredibly useful.

He realised he had been sitting there dumbly, still. He looked up into Val’s worried face. He made a small nod towards his wisp. Soon, her eyes were flicking back and forth as she read through the party interface on her own wisp. Her head slowly turned back to him.

“Oh, boy. Scriber is never going to leave you alone once he sees this,” she said.