The Fool 19

A few moments of silence went by.

As if a light bulb went off in the archer's head, he simply said, "Oh... Well, Ma always said that a man with two women in his house would never know peace, no matter what he thought he could handle. No fooling, that sounds like a problem I'd WANT to solve. Sure would beat this fine mess. How does a woman up and decide she wants two men anyhow? Don't make no damn sense."

Orison sighed and said, "I'm thinking she did it for us. I'm certain it helped that she was fond of us both but do you understand what it means, the soul marks we have? It's more than just a convenience that lets us find each other easy or share essence and stuff. When... if we die, our souls will be drawn to each other. Certain effects will be shared between us and our supernatural comprehensions will subtly align with one another to remain compatible."

"Lily's probably a lot more knowledgeable on the subject than me but even I know that souls naturally entangle like that. Everybody knows the tired trope of lovers bound by fate but the bonds between mother and child, siblings, even best friends can sometimes connect on that level. I think she was preparing for the issues such a situation can raise and took a mark from both of us to help her resolve or accept them when we meet again.

"That's just my take on it, though. She might have had purely selfish reasons for doing it but it doesn't bother me as much as I thought such a thing would. Everyone's entitled to pursue their own happiness. It's not like she's forcing anything on us. We're even free to pursue our own love and pleasures until the day of our reunion. Although, I have no doubt she'd be hurt if we collected a gaggle of girls with soul marks like ours.

Orison stopped talking to see if Cray had anything to add but the archer just kept staring towards the burrow entrance. He wondered if the archer was thinking hard thoughts, considering running away or in desperate need of some prune juice.

The young mage cleared his throat to get Crays attention and added with as much compassion and understanding as he could. "The most important point is that our marks don't have to define our relationship with each other. I like you. I think I could build the best friend relationship with you that 'the boy' wanted but couldn't have with Gan.

"Things are strange and too much happened all at once. I did what I did to save your life because the Cray I know is a buddy worth putting my neck out for. I don't want you to be unhappy and I'm willing to take responsibility for my choices."

Red faced, Cray said, "That's, uh, nice and all. But if best buds is what you're aiming for, do you think we could finish this when you look like good ole Orison? Ain't no gilly ever said that to me and my poor aching head ain't thinking about cracking a bottle of home brew and talking about life with you right about now."

Orison looked down at himself and his mind short circuited for a second. "Sorry, I- Wait, you traveled halfway around the world to get back to a girl who didn't even say she liked you!? She seemed pretty broken up about you leaving the first time."

Bitterly, Cray said, "She talked about love and such. She said we was like them folks in her stories but she never said it to me. She only ever told me I was sweet and when she sent me packing that second time, she said being sweet weren't enough. She told me I was plain, a little stupid and kinda boring."

Thinking all kinds of unpleasant thoughts about a girl who probably wasn't mentally mature enough to know better, the young mage said, "I know she was almost double your age but for an elf, that's really young. She was just a dumb girl who didn't know the good thing she had. Believe me. She'll regret those words fiercely later.

"Any woman would be lucky to have you. And whoever wins your heart the next time, if she isn't stupid, she better give as good as she gets. You don't deserve a single bit less. Lily didn't know you for much more than a day and she understood that-"

Blushing so hard, his ears were nearly purple, Cray cut him off to bellow, "Cole, I got us some gear together. We need to get some hunting done while the weather's good."

Patently avoiding Orison, the archer finished putting his gear and the rags underneath to a working order and helped Cole suit up with record speed. When the feline young man looked back at Orison wistfully, Cray scowled and told him to 'get the lead out'. Watching them getting ready to face unknown dangers outside, something occurred to the young mage.

Quickly looking around the cabin, Orison wondered where Lily stashed the replacement teaser suits. Desperately combing through his memories, he ended up checking their standard cupboard which had a few stacks of extra ration bars that weren't there before along with some other essential items that would make their wintering over not so horrid. With the suits on his mind, a recollection of how they worked passed through his head.

Luckily, the towel was barely fixed on. So, instead of ripping, it was simply flung off as a suit popped into being around him. As it adjusted to the new form its owner was wearing, he ran outside shouting to see that Cole was already wearing one. The feline young man seemed to be explaining something while the archer was checking out how he felt about the one he was wearing for the first time.

Upon hearing the smoky voice calling out their names, they looked back and froze. Orison looked down once again to discover that wearing the teaser suit with his new form was almost as bad, possibly worse in some ways, to being naked. Pulling the fluttering open front robe that came as part of the 'caster' model tightly around himself, he apologized for the interruption. Cray seemed even more in a hurry to get going.

Finding it more humorous than anything else, Orison muttered, "Aren't you a little too old to be acting that way over a couple of compliments?"

Hunter who had been watching the whole play from the sideline since before the young mage's conversation with Cray was even finished, said, "Are you simple? You practically said everything a 'nice guy' would want to hear a pretty woman say except 'f*** me!' What was he supposed to do with all of that except run away, you freaky 'trap'."

With a stony face, Orison replied, "First, as a fellow intellectual, let me acknowledge that you have a point. Secondly, if at least another few hours doesn't go by before you throw another casual insult at me, Harry Putter, I'm going to take your wand and beat you with it like it was still the paddle it came from."

Hunter looked at him with a stunned expression of his own before taking on a little heat in the face himself.

Quickly, the budding wizard activated his suit and turned to walk into the cabin. "We have things to catch up on? Let's get to it."

As they sat down and discussed over a hot tea, the young mage learned that the undead had found his ritual circle and had experimented with it. When one of their own was sacrificed, it caused a chain reaction draw that pulled the negative energy from the air around it as well as the other undead nearby except for the controller and the receiver in the middle. 'Undying' crystal created from the one in the center was used on a nearby survivor in the same manner Orison's original use of the circle had been, bringing that one to a state of not quite living but not quite dead.

The ritual circle was affected by the excess mends and 'materials' becoming a more refined and stronger version. It was carted to someone's keep, which Hunter and Cray followed. After a second, far more powerful round, other undead from surrounding holds came to investigate. That caused a struggle to break out between factions, with the winning faction carting the even more refined circle further in. During that time, Cray and the crystallized Orison had been found and carted off as well. A couple days later, while Hunter and Cole were 'trying to find them', the third use happened. It had been terrifyingly powerful and what had turned Orison into a big hill of undying crystal from the person sized one the second use had turned him into. The half-lifers were fighting with the remaining undead which Hunter didn't know much about but the outcome was something Orison somewhat understood.

Win or lose, the circle was used again but on the big bad as sacrifice. It took two times to take the thing down but in between, the creature tried to use its trump card magic item destroying magic to end the circle that had become something of an artifact. All it really managed to do was destroy all magic items but the circle. The last usage of it not only destroyed the creature but also destroyed the circle. The resulting explosion left a crater big enough for the fleeing Hunter and Cole to see miles away.

The budding wizard, just shy of sobbing said, "All that danger and work just for the giant undead baby thing to break all our loot. I wish that thing would c-"

Orison slapped his hand over Hunter's mouth and said, "Are you crazy!? Watch it with the 'W' word from now on."

The budding wizard slowly nodded and then said, "Now what's with the things on your end?"

Orison gave him a quick breakdown of what happened up til they came back to see him curled up on the floor.

The young mage then added, "So, yeah. I was assaulted by runoff life essence from the ritual circle every time it was ran by negative energy. Best I can figure, I was still tied to it and it used my magic to activate the healing portion because this world certainly doesn't seem to accept it.

"As far as the rest, it started off with just passing off some essence but things left behind in the cabin by your wish and deck of cards stuff, had some surprises in it. One of those surprises was a storage crate of something called mini trainers left behind in a piece Osomo sent as a 'debtor' to the one I call White Orison. Since White and Green Orison were inside of me but spiritually alive, their debtors also appeared inside.

"Thankfully for us, the cabin's life preservation field failed at some point, killing Green's debtor. I highly doubt that man accepted for any other reason than to escape some hell his soul rightfully belongs in... Osomo's spiritual proxy found a legitimate way to 'kill' itself to keep from giving me secrets belonging to the First Family.

"Its originator even slipped in a way to make us the First Family's brainwashed soldier boys. Lucky us, we kind of took that knowledge and experience in all at once and that stuff got junked. To be honest, we didn't even get a third total but we got the most useful concepts and theory out of it anyway."

Hunter asked, "I know we all got a party mix of stuff but what were the core parts?"

Trying to couch it in ways the young wizard could understand, he said, "Too mixed to be anything specific, per say. We split up most of the magic theory between us but even that's under-generalizing. You got the bigger portion of flashy, destructive stuff and I got the lion's share of utility.

"I have a deep loathing for illusion and mind control. So, all the mental stuff went out the window for the most part except were it bordered wards, ritual magic and meditation. The parts of illusion that help with maximizing elemental effects went to you while I kept a bit of the stuff that helps get more mileage out of conjuration effects."

Hunter smiled wide. "I got the light and sound, you took the shadowy stuff to fluff up your creations."

Orison nodded. "That sounds about right... Anyway, For you and me, physical combat stuff was tiny gap fillers between the cracks of magic and magic related crafting skills but it's about half of what Cray got and a third of what went to Cole. Our feline friend loves him some skills. It made up half of what he took but around a third for Cray... like opposites of the same coin.

"Where they really differ is their crack fillers. Cray took some druid and shamanistic stuff while Cole took in a surprising amount of the mystic middle ground necromancy and healing. The full blown faith stuff got chopped and tossed to our fairy buddies along with some combat and magic scraps. What has me curious and a little spooked was that I felt good portions of stuff get taken in elsewhere nearby as I had to let it go.

"I make it kind of sound like I had it on lock down but it was more like holding a handful of color coded garden hoses. Once the flood filled up my personal river mill reservoir, I just pointed them at the matching souls and let it rain! To be honest, most of what I think people got is educated guesswork past the big stuff."

Hunter sighed. "I get it. It's a lot more valuable to know how to make a coat than to just be given one. But man, it's freezing and we don't have the stuff to make them. Later on, I'll probably be crying tears of joy it turned out this way but right now..."

Orison raised a well shaped brow. "What makes you think we don't have the stuff to make a spell... Or a coat for that matter? There's a huge grimoire laying in our front yard. Not to mention, there's tons of materials for crafting too. We just have to take the time to salvage and recycle. Think of it as reducing our carbon footprint and practicing living green."

Confused, Hunter said, "How do you mean? All that junk out there has its magic stripped and materials that's been used in one enchantment can't be used for magic again."

The young mage chuckled. "To learn from them, they don't need to be magical. It'll actually be easier since they're not. The rest is jigsaw work and reverse engineering. As far as fixing the material to its original state, enchantments aside, we have a closet over there that I'd like to test the limitations of too. We got months.

"Let me go check our source power for the cabin, though. I rather like having magically provided hot water and a comfortable air temperature. We'll see how much play room we have before we need to start conserving."

It was a strange thing but he had never really been able to 'see' the compartment under the Cabin where the condensed eternium could be dropped in. he only ever knew when it needed more source when the old amount started running out right around the point when it wouldn't be enough to do the day rewind trick. The cabin not being able to do that any longer wasn't a bad thing. It was much more energy efficient than it had been.

Reaching the back of the cabin, he dug around under the lip until he could feel the release catch, after pressing it, a deep and wide tray popped out minutely enough to grab and manually pull. It didn't slide easily and Orison had to strain a bit to get it moving, nearly falling on his backside once it did. Once opened, he understood why it was such a problem. It was filled with dry mud.

It occurred to him that the cabin's previous ability to rewind time may have had other features such as pulling in nearby sources or other such things. It no longer mattered but the consequence of such a thing was a clogged mess that took some time to clean up. The chore brought a few unpleasant surprises along with some he didn't really know what to think of as well.

The occasional pieces of core gradually shifted to chunks of mummified body parts covered in withered tumors. Moving from the center to the back recesses, the mud returned to a moist state that was usable after a good distilling to eradicate whatever unsafe microbes might be dwelling within. His heart nearly leapt out of his chest when two wild women sprang out only to leave uniforms and equipment behind as they turned incorporeal and homed in on the southern planes where the undead empire once stood.

At first he thought that perhaps they were souls in desperate need of negative energy to maintain their existence but that was rubbish. If they had been undead, they would have quickly perished under the presence of life essence in a state of purity far beyond their ability to digest. Looking at the uniforms and seeing the Rogers name sewed on them, he clearly understood what he had seen.

Looking up, he saw that Hunter was readying a precious fire shot from his remaining prepared spells and shouted, "Don't! They're rusalka! As long as we're nice, they'll be nice!... They're probably headed over to that crater you were talking about earlier. It'll take a little time but it will become a lake they'll pretty up, transforming plants into magical ingredients for future generations. Circle of life and all that jazz."