Crystal Cage 30

Eventually, the draw of Danny's conduit lead them off road and into an area called Mire Wood. And although Orison's mount seemed to be able to stay on top of the mucky ground if he was alone on it, Gan's conduit wasn't quite as adept. The most frustrating aspect to the terrain was it's shifting quality of not quite solid enough to walk nor watery enough to skiff. The poisonous critters and disease infested mud was troublesome but relatively incapable of posing any real threat to their group.

The two creatures that roamed the area were very much capable of causing harm. In a bit of enlightened imparting, Orison discovered from Danny that the creatures the innkeeper trucked with were the pupal and larval stages of the largest populated threat in their current area, murk motes. These floating menaces were capable of releasing a toxic gas that might do a fair number of bad things to a person who breathed it in.

Though small in number, the truly dangerous creatures were the mire mouths. People not keen on detail might mistake the mire mouths for murk motes but there was no mistaking what happened once the mire mouths attacked. These floating sacks of death would also release a dark mist with harmful effects but there was a magical quality to theirs that added a more dire result, death clock. Through Osomo's overbearing manner of quantifying everything into measurable manifestations, death clock was a timed necromantic curse that served as an instant death when the timer ran out if not removed.

There was no doubt in Orison's mind that if a previous disciple of Danny's wanted to put their teacher's conduit somewhere it couldn't be reached but where they themselves could, it would likely be in a part where the mire mouths dwelt. He only hoped that it would be a blind spot that a bit of memory or observation could determine and reach without having to face a creature capable of cursing someone to death. Such an ability disregarded power range almost entirely and dealt with what kind of equipment and party abilities one's group possessed.

Orison wrestled with himself before finally handing Danny the set of gear that looked like a smaller variant of what Herne himself had worn, complete with a less obtrusive antlered helmet. Being as the gear wasn't appreciatively less in function and even had a touch more power of existence than what Orison and party had acquired in the tower, he was loath to give it up. Sadly, Danny's pieced together equipment was just shy of garbage in comparison and far from what a person should have when traipsing around the upper side of mid range zones.

Danny recognized the need and didn't act demure about it. "I'll remember this and all the other favors you've done for me, I swear it."

Orison smiled wryly. "Considering we're currently on a quest to recover your forgotten memories, I'd settle with a reasonable best effort."

Danny flushed red in uncomfortable recognition of the irony in his promise as Gan tried not to add oil to the fire by laughing.

Nearly an hour later, under dappled morning sunlight filtering through trees made somewhat sickly from rotting roots, Gan said, "It's getting harder to find a safe way forward. If it isn't bog pits, it groups of murk motes. We've even barely managed to miss one of those grinning monsters Danny almost crapped his breechclout over."

Orison nodded in gloomy agreement. "Hindsight's crystal clear. A druid would have made a big difference. What did you learn from the druid trainer anyway?"

Gan muttered, "It's practically worthless. 'Stone Fang' forces a few hardened roots or sharp spikes of stone out of the ground that settle back in as soon as it's done. Even Mo wonders why the two creatures in the druid training area can fly. I mean, how are you supposed to-"

Orison wanted to scream in frustration but settled for cutting Gan off, "Perspective! Get down into the push-up position, the thing we did for training at the embassy. Alright, now think of yourself as still standing and cast your ability a bit farther-"

Orison quickly yanked Gan up as the scout almost pierced his own head with sharp rock points. After they both took a couple of calming breaths, Orison tried again after explaining in a bit more detail how imagining a different positional perspective worked. They ended up wasting a quarter hour and had to relocate a couple times to avoid roaming creatures but eventually Gan not only understood his ability better, he could improvise natural traps with it.

Armed with the ability to create short lasting stepping spots, Gan finally had more options moving forward but it became evident that his need to cast multiple uses of it in rapid succession was draining him quickly. At first, Orison could help him make up the difference with a little reserve sharing but as avenues narrowed and the way became more treacherous, even Orison was losing reserve faster than he could gain it back.

After another breathless scrape with an unavoidable murk mote to side-step a 'grinning fiend', Orison rethought their movement strategy. "There's more water than ground at this point. I think it would be slightly more efficient to think in opposite operation. Let's get your conduit into a gondola shape and we'll use your ability to temporarily remove spots rather than make them... It's a bit shaky but I might be able to make a mud golem that can help now too."

Using the replica of Herne's halberd as a gondola pole, amusing Danny in the process, Gan's druid ability and Orison's two foot mud puppet got them moving in relative safety yet again. As a added bonus, Herne's halberd ended up being a good deterrent for the occasional murk mote that had become an annoying addition to their routine.

Frantically fanning the air for the third time in the last ten minutes, Orison said in slightly panicked irritation, "Where is my mask when I need it the most? That's right, Osomo took the damn thing! Wake up Danny. You just got gassed again... Do either of you have any idea how much further we have to go?"

Veins standing out on his forehead, Gan said, "It feels close but stop with the 'Are we there yet?' thing, please! Better yet, hit us with your healing light, I think I might be affected by a berserk or something."

Orison chuckled in false humor. "Nope, I'm just starting to rub you the wrong way. Hell, I'm rubbing me the wrong way but I'm thoroughly sick of this place."

Gan snorted. "I'm the one taking blasts of that foul stench to the face when I swat them down. Don't mention sick, I think I'm starting to retch up pieces of my stomach."

Attempting to improve the mood a little, the veteran guardian said, "If you need a break, I can take a turn on the pole."

Gan sighed. "Thankfully, there's no real need because you'd only have it for a minute or two at most before you were sleeping again. What a strange weakness for such great equipment to have... We're about to switch back to clod hopping, I think. Little boss, what's the word on it?"

Orison frowned. "Damned if we do or don't, really. If our magic reserves get much lower, we're going to be mud skipping and peeling off murk mote babies soon."

Pushing their magical and physical endurance to the limits of what wasn't outright suicidal, the trio made it to the center of Mire Wood, a relatively dry and gently sloping mound of an island in the muck. As if fate itself took some pity on them, there seemed to be no visible enemy on Gan's map. With relief so palpable that only Danny's eyes showed no signs of watering, the small party picked off a couple mote pupa before cleaning themselves, eating and taking a desperately needed rest.

Gan, the most overused and drained of the group, forced himself to eat a second serving of rations with a green face. "If I can keep this down, Creator, I promise to swear off drinking for a mo- a half-month."

Looking around, Orison found a familiar mint variant and a 'sweet grass'. With a quick use of Osomo assisted alchemy and two uses of 'degree shift', Orison presented his field tonic to Gan and Danny.

Readying his own share, Orison gave a toast, "On behalf of The Creator, I'll hold you to it, Gan. You don't really need this, Danny, but a cool drink of herbal tea might help make you feel like a person again."

As his companions sipped the tonic and took a moment to let stamina return to trembling muscles, the young mage looked out to a roaming group of murk motes that appeared to be lead by a mire mouth. From their hidden vantage point, they were safe for the time being but if they were to take a full rest, an army of murk mote pupa and larva would likely insure they'd wake up in a transporter platform. Not that Orison would have let them anyway.

With evening making a swift approach, the intuitive feeling that had been goading Orison the whole way was building up steam. Lengthening shadows also meant increased activity and more erratic patterns for the creatures they were trying desperately to avoid. Unable to delay any longer, the trio wound their way through ever tightening gaps.

Weaving through foliage like drunken dancers, their path of advancement turned into side winding. The frustration of being so close but not able to find a gap to the inner mound made Orison become so furious he was almost in tears. After everything that they had endured to get here, the situation looked bleaker by the moment. High emotions and fraying nerves eventually produced a mistake that couldn't be recovered.

Hearing the loud shotgun snap of a dried branch under his foot, Orison made an apologetic face at Gan as they quickly tried to weave through enough greenery that they would escape detection. It didn't take long before even Orison was able to easily see in low output spirit sight that there was no more paths to take. They were being surrounded and it was by a group of mire mouths. They had run out of grace.

As the first of the floating monstrosities came into view, the young mage had already built his transport model. Despite that, a dark mist with an oily rainbow sheen to it darted at them with supernatural speed. Through a last curse of anguish over wasted effort, Orison released the casting as he felt a wave of different effects try to latch on to all three of them.

The radiant curtain of light that whisked them to safety was something that Orison typically found pleasant but at that moment it seemed like a mocking thing. That sour thought plagued him as he took in the unfamiliar room. It wasn't uncommon for smaller villages to build a structure around the transporters as if they needed protection from the elements but the clean, antiseptic nature of this one was more reminiscent of First Family architecture revisioned by a less skillful hand.

Danny, who had been looking more closely at the transporter, said, "How did this thing even work? Its power source is empty."

Orison turned towards him and said dully, "My beacon model empowers itself from my magic..." Then what Danny had said fully filtered into his despondent mind. "That shouldn't be possible! Osomo would replace a power source long before it could run dry."

Rushing over to the back area of the transporter where Danny had originally appeared, Orison immediately noticed that this particular transporter had been refitted from mended parts. The cell that shown through a gap in the fitting was an inferior one that the young mage was all too familiar with.

Gan, who had been silent at the side suddenly became animated. "We're in the mound, Little Boss! Do you know what that means!?"

Orison smiled widely. "It means we didn't fail."

Though he was happy at the outcome, the scout looked almost equally as aggrieved. "Well, sure but I meant that we didn't have to go through that at all. We could have just, swoosh, been here!"

Orison shook his head. "Maybe. We also could have ended up in an instance, unable to leave."

Danny said, "I can't be certain but I think we were pulled here."

Looking at Danny then up in confusion, Gan said, "There's another transporter up there, around two stories above us."

Breaking into a cold sweat, Orison declared, "Since we're going to start traveling around areas that have a lot of space between them and safe transporters, I'm going to have to shell out for hearthstones. Blind beacon jumps are too damn dangerous... Either way, we should get moving."

Walking up to the double doors, Orison expected to be scanned but nothing happened as he enlisted Gan and Danny's help to open them. What was revealed behind hind them made the young mage's heart pound for a moment before he realized that nothing had power. Much like the scene from Construct Three, they walked into a room ready to unleash technological madness on any intruder that dared to enter but it was all stuck in place with vague signs of decomposition.

With nothing of relative worth to take, they moved on into a large lobby. At least, that was their assumption of what the bowed and twisted room was. In far flung corners, there were even signs of Osomo reclaiming and naturalizing the space. That was something Orison knew shouldn't happen to structures made out of certain materials on the First Family's construction list. It was as if portions of the material had began to transmute into something else.

Aside from the room's miserable state, there was something of interest in the room. A large portrait, preserved behind a pane of glass-like crystal on the wall, had four figures on it. A kindly looking old man rested a slightly gnarled hand on the shoulder of a radiant woman. A man that would be a dead ringer for Danny, had an arm draped over the old man's shoulders as the two men seemed to be having a conversation behind a teenage boy fiddling with a portable trainer on the table.

In sympathy for the strangeness Orison thought that Danny must have been feeling, the young mage indulged the veteran guardian a little time to take in the portrait before calling the group to move on. Within the next area, there were multiple rooms but reaching most of them would be a chore since the rooms and joining space were twisted with such severity that a few were above them and others had their access nearly pinched off.

Taking a bit of time to scavenge, there wasn't much of interest but there were a few unidentifiable gems and ores that Osomo had tried to convert some of the surrounding material into that in turn changed again, rejecting the world's design. Though Gan had found some food and beverages that had been preserved in a far part of what must have been a kitchen at one time, it didn't look safe. For lack of anything better, Danny's discovery of some clothing and other fabrics that had been changed in interesting but relatively harmless ways was divided up into portions of what interested them.

Unable to stop himself, Orison asked, "Is there any reluctance to be touring around with others, letting them loot what was once probably your own home?"

Danny glanced around at the twisted wreckage and said, "If it had been my home, it was long ago... And without you two, who knows how long it would take for chance to bring me here."

Trying to move down into the next area proved to be a difficult task since it had collapsed. It ended up taking some time and a fairly various use of Gan's conduit before they had bypassed the stairwell turned corkscrew shaft.

"I've been thinking about this for awhile but considering the nature of your conduit, it might be a good thing for you to go over some engineering blueprints, Gan," Orison said thoughtfully.

Seeing Gan's misery laden silence, the young mage didn't press the issue. Getting the scout to pour over directories and bestiaries may not have been that difficult because even though Gan didn't enjoy them, it did help him do the thing he did enjoy better. Any other kind of academic study wasn't going to be as easy a sell.

As they entered a part of the underground 'home' that looked more like a cavern that had merged with a Salvador Dali painting, Orison blurted, "Gan, we leaned heavy on you this time. You're the star of this show today, man. Don't think I'm going to bust your balls on learning sh*t you don't care about when we get back to civilization. Thanks for the 110% max effort, really."

As his ears turned furnace glow red, Gan stared at a random wall and said, "Don't sneak attack me with that sappy crap."

With a serious expression, Danny said, "It's a fair statement that we wouldn't have made it hear without you, Ganga."

After all the trials of the day, the sudden expressions of gratitude was a little too rich for the scout as he faced a wall fully and grunted that he had heard.

While Danny looked at Orison in confusion, the young mage explained, "Gan comes from a place where a bruising hand print on your back is a seal of approval. They're not much for verbal expressions of encouragement unless they're wasted."

Having been in a courtly environment for several years, the veteran guardian wasn't quite comfortable with physical assault as a form of thanksgiving so he settled for a shoulder pat before walking further in. With a mischievous smirk, Orison swatted Gan's backside and sidestepped an attempt by the scout to get him in a headlock before trotting to catch up with Danny. Halfhearted attempts at revenge by the scout stopped cold as they got their first view of the new 'room' they just entered.

While closing his own, Orison threw a hand in front of Gan's eyes as he shouted in dire seriousness. "Don't look!"