The first night of his tenure as clanfriend had gone… not so well, Erick thought as he laid in bed, unable to sleep.

Dinner had been a large, whole clan affair, with most everyone dipping out of the same cauldron, and taking rice from the same large pots. A few people cooked their own meals elsewhere, and ate elsewhere, but most of the clan ate together, with more than a few families pulling their yurts around to form a loose ring around the cooking yurt. Poi was even able to help cook, though he was kicked out rather quickly for reasons Erick wasn’t quite sure of.

Erick and his people ate their meals at a corner table, while everyone else stayed away. The few times he had gone to talk to people or tried to be friendly, he had gotten stonewalled with silence, or polite nothing answers. The people of Clan Pale Cow were polite about their refusal to interact with him, but they did refuse; there was no doubt about that.

To be fair, Erick had made a mistake in the beginning of the night. Ophiel had been out on patrol, and he pinged Erick that he saw some monsters. A quick check showed that, yes, those were monsters. Lizards, five of them and each as large as two cows put together. They were still about five kilometers away, but they were headed this way from the south, and they were downwind of the spread out caravan and all the cows.

And so, Ophiel [Luminous Beam]ed them, lighting up the southern horizon with a quick squiggle of brightness.

It wasn’t halfway through the brightness on the horizon that the entire caravan rapidly caught on that something was happening down south. Conversation faltered.

Erick spoke up, trying to calm them all by saying, “It’s just some lizards. They’re gone now.”

And thus, the shunning, which was already rather bad, was cemented, and no one wanted to talk to Erick except to excuse themselves to go elsewhere. Erick had been meaning to talk with Yorila and Amasar, but after his display of power, those two didn’t want anything to do with him, for now.

The next time Ophiel found some monsters Erick had them use [Flying Striker]s, conjuring up about five flying swords per Ophiel. Spinning blades of Force were a much less visible display of magic, especially when it was done five kilometers out from camp—

Laying in bed, trying not to think about the shunning, and mostly succeeding, Erick got another ping from Ophiel. Monsters.

Erick checked on what Ophiel had found, and discovered rats of unusual size. The main one was rather large. It was five meters fat from fangs to butt, with three more body lengths of tail beyond that. The smaller rats all around it were only the size of small cows. And… Yup! Cores in the body, near the heart. They were all monsters. Despite the size of the main rat, it was still just a normal monster; no grand rad there.

Ophiel made quick work of the monster rats, mulching them beyond most casual attempts at identifying the bodies, and then [Cleanse]ing the remains away.

It wasn’t the first time Ophiel had interrupted Erick’s attempt at sleep. Perhaps that was more of a reason why he could not rest. There were monsters out there, and Erick wasn’t comfortable with the power of the guardians on duty. He had seen them work, of course, and Clan Pale Cow had survived all this time without Erick’s intervention, but there were no walls around the clan, and that set him a bit on edge. It was an irrational fear, for sure, but it was still a fear.

Erick wasn’t actually ‘on guardian duty’ right now, either. He was just killing monsters because they kept him awake. He might have been on duty, but he had never managed to talk with the woman in charge of putting people on guardian duty. At dinner, Forage Leader Ibahka had taken her dinner and rushed away, into her yurt, shunning everyone except for the few people who went with her.

Erick would need to seek her out tomorrow and claim an actual assignment.

But, for now, Erick was on duty ‘whenever he felt like it’, according to Niyazo.

And so, for now…

He laid in bed, on the bottom floor of his [Obscuring Redoubt], still awake.

The Redoubt was a pretty nice spell. The first floor was invisible to outsiders, while the basement was well defended with nice, thick doors between the exterior and the sleeping area. The walls of the place were dense stone, without a speck of stray dirt anywhere. Erick had thrown some thin lightwards along every upper edge of every room, giving a diffuse glow to the entire interior, while the lights in the bedrooms were much dimmer, but still allowed visibility.

In the original casting of the spell the Redoubt had enough rooms to hold ten people, but Erick had Shaped this one to only have three rooms. Two common rooms, and one bathroom. There was no running water and [Cleanse] was the only way to get clean around here, of course, but a separate room was nice to have, just for the privacy of the space. That smaller room was basically just a hole in the ground, though.

The bedrooms were spacious, but [Obscuring Redoubt] didn’t come with furniture. So Erick, like everyone else, was using [Conjure Item] in order to make themselves a bed and covers and everything else they needed to get a good night’s rest.

As Erick’s mana sense wandered, he saw that one of their party was not used to this kind of sleeping arrangement.

Nirzir slept lightly in the other room, but then she turned over a bit too fast and her conjured bed popped underneath her, returning to the manasphere as sparkles of violet light. Nirzir yelped for a fraction of a second before she landed on her spread-out extra set of clothes.

It was the second time that had happened, which was the reason for the clothes spread out under her conjured bed.

Nirzir cursed softly and then. Just lying there, she accepted her fate. For three more minutes she tried to fall asleep, but it wasn’t working. The young girl rolled over to stare at ceiling as tears—

Okay! None of that, now. Erick got up off of his own bed and then he stepped around the wall that separated his and Poi’s room from the girls’ room.

“Hey,” Erick whispered, trying not to wake the others. “Let me make a bed for you.”

Nirzir froze on the floor. Then she raised her head and looked past her feet, to see Erick standing a few meters away. Before, she had insisted on making her own bed. But now... Her lips pulled down and she scrunched her face hard as she could, but she did not cry; she would not let herself. She just nodded.

Erick gestured for her to get up.

Nirzir did so, rolling out of the way.

[Conjure Item] was a funny spell. The resulting item always had 50 ‘Health’, and the harder an item was, the easier it was for it to suffer damage, but if you made a really soft item, then it could suffer catastrophic damage with as little as a gentle poke. The secret to making a sturdy conjured item was to make an item that could deform and not care about being deformed, because it would always spring back. The standard [Conjure Item] bed was made with this working in mind. It was a 500 mana spell of a hundred thousand smaller parts all contained in a wrapping of hard cloth; a chicken down bed, with feathers that could crush, but were slightly curved so that they could spring back. Theoretically.

Most people failed at properly making a bed. The down feathers would crush and then break. The outer covering could tear. The standard ‘Adventuring Bed’ was a work of a thousand failure points.

Some people tried gel-based bedding. The most popular one of that was a working that involved Elemental Ooze and [Force Platform], to make a bouncy, floating bed. That sort of working was much more resilient than a standard bed, but since [Force Platform] lasted 100 minutes, baseline, most people weren’t able to make one of those that lasted long enough to provide actual, good sleep. And besides that, most people did not like ‘ooze beds’.

But if one was born on Earth, and if one had gone through years of trying to find a nice bed that allowed one to recapture some of the easy sleep they used to have when they were younger, one might remember a bit about polyurethane, and memory foam. Past that, Intelligence helped to fill in a lot of gaps.

And so, Erick cast a spell, imagining that he was conjuring polymer chains in an open matrix, which let in air, and which never truly broke. It was a variation of chicken-down bouncing-back structure, but done in a much more high-tech way. It also worked rather well, as Erick’s own bed could attest to.

A white rectangular prism of foam flopped out of the air, on top of Nirzir’s extra clothes. A second casting conjured up a pillow of the same stuff, while a third and fourth casting conjured up a pair of blankets, with one to lay on, and one to lay under. The blankets would mitigate some of the damage the other items would incur through casual sleeping use, but they were also a major failing point, as most soft things were.

Erick was still rather proud of those blankets, though. They were modeled after the mist rabbit fur blanket that he had gotten for Jane, from Arbor O’kabil, but with a bit of polyester ideas thrown in to give them some strength. Erick was using the same setup in his own conjured bed, and it felt great.

Erick conjured up a second set to the side of the room, whispering, “In case the first one fails.”

Nirzir was still sitting on the floor, seemingly not able to touch the bed he had conjured, but at his words she put a hand on the fabrics, feeling their softness. Her face lit up with a wordless thanks as she dried her tears with one hand and pushed her other hand into the fabric, and into the foam bed below. It was like touching a solid cloud, and Erick could tell she liked it.

Erick whispered, “I like this kind of bed, but Poi and Teressa don’t. Let me know if you don’t like it tomorrow, but for now, it’s good enough to sleep on. Good night.”

With a tiny smile and averting her eyes, Nirzir whispered, “Thank you.”

Erick went back to his room.

Nirzir climbed into her bed.

Ophiel informed Erick of more monsters, this time to the west. More rats, but smaller; the size of dogs.

And so, Ophiel tumbled through the air, slashing his swords this way and that, ending the threat before it got anywhere near the cows, or the caravan.

With all these threats ended, Erick tried to sleep…

But it wasn’t working. Nirzir had managed to fall into slumber in her new bed, finally sleeping the sleep of the dead. Even when Teressa’s bed popped and the woman slammed into the ground with a heavy crunch, and Jane laughed, only to find her own bed popped in a mysterious coincidence seconds later, Nirzir slept.

And.

Yeah.

This wasn’t working for him.

So Erick sent Ophiel out, far away from the caravan, and had him cast an Imaging into the sky, targeting every single small core within 100 kilometers. Then Ophiel killed those monsters. Then, Ophiel targeted every medium core. Erick got a lot more hits this time, since the medium cores were normal-sized cores. After Ophiel killed those monsters, Erick targeted grand cores, and found three in the area. All three belonged to giant underground plants, each of which laid at the bottom of a large hole of their own making. The top of the hole was covered up by mucus and dirt, but anything could fall through those holes, to fall into the vats of acid that belonged to the plant below. A few of them had cow bones in their gullets, but no people bones.

Erick killed those plants with a heavy dose of [Luminous Beam]s.

According to their kill notifications they were called Abyss Drinkers.

By the time Erick had finished it was three in the morning. He had also spotted no less than three other caravans within a hundred kilometers, each defending themselves from the predations of those who hunt in the dark.

And with all those monsters now dead, Erick felt safe enough to sleep.

- - - -

The day dawned, and Erick did not wake till hours later, when the smell of coffee and streams of sunlight invaded the darkened sleeping space underground. As he got up, Erick took quick stock of the space. Everyone else was already awake and gone from the bottom floor, their beds dispersed and their stuff picked up and taken upstairs. Nirzir’s bed was still there, though, along with her extra one; she hadn’t burst the one Erick had made. He hoped she liked it.

Erick’s daily routine was much shorter when he was out camping. He just got up, went to the bathroom while Ophiel hung out with Yggdrasil’s eye outside of the closed room, and then he [Cleanse]d himself, all the while recasting his daily spellwork.

By the time he got upstairs he was feeling good, but it was a shame there were no showers out here. There had barely been any showers in Songli, either. That was just the culture, for you.

Poi sat by a table, sipping coffee and talking to other people through [Telepathy]; Erick guessed twelve people, based on the number of tendrils coming off of his head.

It had to be at least ten in the morning. Everyone else must have been awake, and Poi was actually drinking water. The smell of coffee in the air was coming from a pot of the stuff that Poi had likely just made, perhaps in order to wake him.

“You are correct,” Poi said, smiling to himself.

Erick asked, “So where is everyone else?”

“Jane is out learning how to wrangle cows from cowback, with Amasar and the other cowherds teaching her what she needs to know. Nirzir is learning to cook at the kitchens. Teressa is a guest speaker at the children’s yurt, telling them of monsters the world over. Breakfast was great. Lots of interesting conversations, too.” Poi gave Erick a look. “Everyone on guardian duty was talking about how few monsters tried to attack, while every old hand was talking about the dangers of complacency. A few quiet people even floated the idea that you might have had something to do with that.”

Erick smiled innocently, saying, “I only killed a few hundred monsters. Besides! What did they expect me to do? Leave the threats alone?”

“Niyazo spoke of how you were on guardian duty, when you felt like it. A lot of people then decided that you must have felt like it.”

“… And what did they say to that?”

“They don’t like being coddled.”

“Ah. Well. I can see that.” Erick grabbed himself some coffee and poured in some milk, saying, “Thanks for the coffee.”

“You’re welcome.”

Erick shifted half his sight toward Ophiel, looking around as he asked, “So how was your reception at breakfast? Better than last night?” He asked, “You did go to breakfast with everyone, didn’t you?”

“Jane and Nirzir went and got it, to bring it back while you were sleeping.” Poi began, “They told me that everyone seemed a lot nicer, and that...”

- - - -

With knife in hand, Nirzir Void Song stood over the corpse of her enemy and stared down at her own defeat.

She cried a little.

Waveni, her current instructor on the ‘fine art’ of cooking, also stood over the corpse of Nirzir’s defeated enemy. The older woman frowned at the mangled onion. Then the old woman laughed, loud and boisterous, and said, “Looks like you ain’t never done this before, girlie!”

“I’ve chopped an onion before!” Once. Literally once before. “But this was different.” She wiped her eyes with the back of her sleeve, saying, “And it never made me cry so much. I swear, I can do this.”

Waveni and several other nearby cooks laughed at that.

After breakfast, which had been so much better than the stew— The stew was good! But Nirzir knew she would be eating that stew a lot, and she did not look forward to that.— Nirzir had inquired after learning to cook, from the cooks themselves. Waveni had taken an instant liking to Nirzir for her desire to help, and so, here Nirzir was, in the kitchens between mealtimes, learning how to make the stew that she was already dreading. And she was failing at this very first step. Chopping onions shouldn’t be this hard!

A little while ago, Waveni had shown Nirzir how to chop up an onion, properly, and then told Nirzir to try. The old Cook’s onion was perfectly minced to pieces no bigger than her pinky fingernail. Nirzir’s onion was chopped unevenly, with each piece varying from thumb sized to fingernail-clipping sized.

Waveni chuckled and glanced to the mountain of onions left to chop, sitting in a large stone bowl to the side. There had to be a thousand onions there! And then she laughed louder when she looked to the empty stone bowl that was meant to hold the final chopped product. Nirzir stood in between the bowls, with her own table, and her own cutting board, and her own problems.

“My oh my! You have a task, if’n I do say so.” Waveni smiled wide, saying, “You’ll learn eventually. Just try not to cut yourself. I got faith in you, girlie, so go on, and keep chopping!”

Nirzir Void Song knew of the philosophy about cooking. She knew the recipes to some of her favorite foods. She understood the ideas behind feeding a hundred people from the same pot. But what she didn’t understand was the idea of not using magic to chop, or to mix, or to do anything except for heating, and even that was kept to a minimum. Mostly, they burned wood to heat their ovens, but Nirzir could tell there was magic in those metal boxes, stirring the air, or something.

And so, with knife in hand, and knowing that even if she slipped, the knife they had given her was very much not sharp enough to actually injure her, Nirzir said, “I can do this.”

Waveni smiled, then swiped off the mangled remains of Nirzir’s onion into the final product bowl, saying, “It don’t gotta be perfect on your first try, but I expect near enough to perfect by the thousandth onion. Just remember, you gotta chop off the roots and the head and take off the outermost skin, too. Can’t be getting that trash into the stew.” She walked away, saying, “Keep at it!” And then she gestured at another mountain of vegetables, saying, “And then you can move onto the white root!”

Nirzir paled a little. She cried a little. She told herself it was mostly the onions.

A crazy question struck her in that moment: Why would anyone create vegetables that made you cry when you cut them! Some sadist archmage, no doubt. Erick wouldn’t make something like this, for sure!

That, and many other questions filled Nirzir’s mind as she proceeded to learn how to handle a knife. It was much more difficult than learning how to handle a [Flying Sword] spell. She had skill with magic! She had no skill with this… this mundane shit!

… But she would learn, dammit. She would learn.

Apparently, Erick liked cooking—

And let’s just ignore those slippery, flighty feelings. Think instead about how living a life without magic could lead one to more power than any other public archmage to ever come before! (Except for the Headmaster; he didn’t count in this scenario.) Erick has flown to the top of the world, to become a dominant power. And he built his entire base on the basic building blocks of this New Cosmology. He spent his entire life doing things the mundane way, listening to the world around him, and paying attention to the details. And if that was all it took to become an archmage, then others would have come first, and so, there was something special about that man.

Maybe there was merit to the mundane, beyond the obvious.

Or maybe it was just as simple as what everyone in her family had said: Once you learn about the mundane, then you can learn how to make magic influence the mundane, and end up with massive multipliers larger than ever before. It was all about forming the spell just exactly right, like drawing a perfect circle with a sweep of the hand, or telling a person the exact right thing they needed to hear, or parrying a sword with your own and then counter attacking…

It was about holding the knife, just right, to inflict the maximum amount of change, using the least amount of power, so that when you did use all of your power, the stroke of the knife would be massive.

But maybe the truth of Erick’s power was more how Nirzir imagined it to be. Maybe there was something more important than mundanity. Maybe, the most important thing was about doing the right thing, at the right time. Maybe, the best magic came about from connecting with others, and from not retreating from the world.

All magic came from everyone, after all, so therefore it made sense that it was easier to connect to magic when you connected to others. Maybe, the truth of it all was that mana liked connections. You never heard about archmages past when they make their grandest magics, or after they set themselves up for life with their small deeds done out of sight. (Again, the Headmaster did not count.) Erick was obviously just getting started with his grand deeds, and everything he did was more impressive than the month before.

And it was very nice when he came into her room last night and made her a bed just like his—

Nope.

Put those thoughts away, Nirzir. Remember what Poi said.

She cleared her mind. She focused.

And so, Nirzir chopped onions, slipping every so often, but learning how to hold the knife better each chop. If it wasn’t for her spellwork she would have lost thumbs and fingertips, many times over.

Waveni came by after Nirzir had gotten through twenty onions, and saw that Nirzir was having trouble. “I know you ain’t used to this life, but I see you trying, and I like that.” She glanced around, and noticing no one nearby, leaned in and whispered, “You can use magic if you keep it small. I won’t tell if you don’t.”

Nirzir felt a great appreciation for the older woman in that moment. She said, “Thank you, but I want to do it correctly, and that means no magic.”

Waveni broke into a wide, happy smile, followed by a laugh. “Good for you! We’ll make a Cook out of you, yet! How many levels you got, girlie? You need it, I can get the guardians to get you in on some monster kills.”

Nirzir felt even more appreciation for the woman. All of Clan Pale Cow seemed to be a lot more welcoming than she had expected.

But she couldn’t take that offer. Nirzir said, “Thank you, but my brothers took me out for some monster kills almost a year ago. I’m already Classed.”

“Well you just work on them onions, then.” Waveni said, “We want to have the ingredients in the cauldron before we hitch up the cows and get traveling again. I reckon we gots about three hours before that happens.”

Nirzir nodded—

She readily asked, “Do you eat things other than stew? I liked the fried bread this morning!”

“Oh my yes!” Waveni laughed, and the other nearby Cooks joined her. “We eat more than stew. We even had rice last night, though I prefer it the way I make it— nothing against your man, though. What’s his name? Poi?”

“Yes; that’s his name.” Nirzir did not say how every meal should have good rice, and that rice didn’t count as ‘other things’, and that the way Pale Cow made rice was an abomination. Seriously! Who boils rice in a bucket and calls that ‘rice’! But Nirzir held her tongue.

Waveni smiled, saying, “We make everything you’ve ever had! Dumplings, pies, pastas—”

An older man exclaimed, “Curries and steamed rice! The boiled stuff can’t compare!”

Waveni turned on the man. “You cook rice your way when I’m dust, and not a moment sooner! You understand me, Jorn?”

Jorn just laughed, and he wasn’t the only one.

Another older woman called out, “You better be grilling up some vegetables we [Grow] at the next riverside, Waveni! I ain’t [Grow]ing you no more onions, lest you do!” She added, “And you best not be grilling me onions and calling it done!”

“You quit complaining, too.” Waveni told the woman, “Onions are a perfect food! Fills you up and goes with everything. You like them too.”

“I just want my grilled squash, you hear.”

“Aye! I hear you.”

And then a different cook spoke up about grilled meat, and how grilled vegetables were terrible, but the other older woman wasn’t having it, which then cascaded into everyone speaking about their favorite foods.

Waveni smirked, and while everyone else spoke of specific dishes, she said, “We’ll have all of those harder-to-make meals when we get to Ooloraptoor and settle to a single place for a while, but when we’re traveling, stew is what we eat. Gotta have a well balanced dish for when people get injured fighting the monsters, because healing takes a toll, and having a good hearty stew is necessary.”

“Oh. Right.” Nirzir said, “That makes sense.” And then she decided to take a chance, mostly because Waveni had said that she could use magic if it was easier, so therefore, Waveni probably didn’t mind magic that much. Nirzir just had to keep it small and quiet. Nirzir whispered, “If people need healing I can help. I have those spells.”

Every nearby person went quiet for a few moments in the wake of Nirzir’s words.

Waveni flinched, hard, and then she tried to pass it off as though she hadn’t, by saying, “Don’t worry none about that. Just chop chop chop like you do. We’ll make a Cook out of you yet!”

Nirzir knew she wasn’t the most socially adroit person, but even she knew that she had fucked up.

Ah. Oh well.

… Eventually, conversations started up again, though now, Nirzir had her mana sense active. She might not have the range and ability with that skill that some people possessed, but she certainly noticed that the people around her watched her like she was going to poison their food, or something. She definitely noticed the tiny [Cleanse]s that were cast on the onions when they were taken away to the big cauldron, too.

Well wasn’t that a bit disappointing?

But… Then again, what did she expect? These people were nice and welcoming, but they were insular, too. They were humoring Erick and his entourage by allowing them to help out around here, all to keep up appearances, to allow Clan Pale Cow to dominate their ‘debates’. They were just using Erick for his power, weren’t they?

Nirzir felt a bit angry at that. These people were just as illusion-faced as everyone back at home. This was exactly the shit she was trying to get away from. This was the shit that made her want to crawl into a hole and never come out. She had tried not to let her anger show and she was mostly successful, for as onions came apart under her clumsy cuts, some of the tears rolling down her face were tears of quiet anger. Nirzir was pretty sure that it was hard for other people to tell the difference.

- - - -

Jane loved horses.

A corollary to that love, was the unicorn. There was a part of Jane that was very, very excited that she could transform into one of those mythical beasts, but she kept that part of herself on lockdown for a dozen different reasons. Only a few of those reasons had to do with what unicorns had been on Earth, but those reasons were ingrained in Jane, and thus, she could not rid herself of them.

And NO, she did not like My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. Of course, she had seen several of the episodes… Okay! She saw every single episode! She loved that damn show! But too many weirdos liked that show, too. Some of the people she met in college who watched that show were perfectly fine, but the others were not. Horses were not a sex thing for Jane. She just liked the idea of escaping the world on horseback. Of shootouts with the Law. Of wind flowing through her hair.

But since there were no horses on Veird, and since spiders were pretty damn cool (and much more versatile), Jane was more than happy with her spider-heavy Familiar Form catalogue.

And besides that, unicorns were a bit different on Veird than they were thought of on Earth.

On Veird, unicorns were horrible eaters of children and enslavers of minds. There was absolutely nothing good about them except for all of their innate abilities. [Aura of Freedom] was magnificent, and always usable outside of the unicorn form. [Light Sculptor] and [Beautification Aura] required a horn to be incorporated into the body, but that was easy enough, and rather innocuous, if you did it right.

And in lesser ways, ‘unicorns’ were not actually ‘unicorns’, at all, for they had absolutely no relationship to horses at all. Fun fact! Veird unicorns were actually an offshoot of the cow, mutated into a powerful, lithe form, and then imbued with Light. Horses didn’t exist on Veird. Everything that was a horse was simply an offshoot of the cow. The unicorn’s actual name was ‘orolos’, which meant ‘cow of devouring light’, but translation being what it was, and since orolos looked very much like unicorns, ‘orolos’ were ‘unicorns’ for all intents and purposes.

Jane didn’t really care for cows, but they were as close as Veird got to horses, and they were cute, in their own ways.

She could never see herself as a [Cow Polymage], though, and for multiple reasons. The main reason was that cows were a prey species. Most variants never survived outside of the herd, and herds were usually overseen by people, and the people didn’t want cows rising up and killing their caretakers. There was a vicious cycle of breeding going on there. But even the baseline cows were not that great. Cows had limited range of movement, and they were slow. A herd could not defend itself from outside threats, which was why guarding the cows was just as important as guarding the caravan.

Only the Shade, Hollowsaur, made monstrous cows, but even his cows weren’t viable in the larger world. The only monstrous species of cow that ever survived to become a true breed of ‘monster cow’, were the unicorns, and that was only because of [Aura of Freedom], which prevented capture, and [Beautification Aura], which prevented anyone from being able to see or realize that the cow was in their presence.

This was not for the world’s lack of trying to breed better, different cows, though. As Jane got to know the herd of Clan Pale Cow, she realized that there were a lot more cows out there than she ever guessed possible.

Jane walked alongside Amasar and a few other cowherds, on the northern flank of the herd. The cows mooed, calling out with happy sounds, while young ones played amongst the crowd, tousling each other with their nubby horns. The wind whistled through the grasses, and the chilly air smelled of cow. It was not a bad smell, but it wasn’t a great smell, either. It was certainly not the smell of horses.

Cows were cute, though, so Jane could be a cowherd for a while. This might be fun!

Amasar pointed to a yellowish cow that was dappled with orange. “What is that one?”

Jane had gone through orientation for the last hour, which mostly involved Amasar talking about cows and telling Jane about the breeds they raised. Amasar had already told Jane that she probably wouldn’t be able to ride today, and for not a week more, at least, but they were here, and Jane was ready to ride if the opportunity presented itself. Perhaps proving herself as a good listener would be enough to let her get on a cow, with everyone else.

Jane answered, “A dappled cow; one of the milkers. Great for cheese. Runs from a fight. Minor air control powers. Needs to be defended.”

Amasar nodded once, then pointed to a light brown cow with short horns.

Jane answered, “A possible breeding bull, but too young to challenge the reigning patriarch. Don’t protect him from the reigning bull. Defend from all other threats, like all the other cows. Possible stone powers, so probably not a good breeding bull, anyway.”

“Correct. Good assessment, too.” Amasar pointed to the young pair of male cows, butting heads. Both of them were blonde.

“Immature bulls.” Jane said, “Protect from the main bull, but not too vigorously. Air aligned, so good breeding stock.”

“Correct.” Amasar asked, “What must we do if monsters attack?”

“If it is a small incursion, allow the herd to be bloodied. Allow the herd the chance to defend themselves, first.” Jane said, “But any monster the size of a cow must be rebuffed, hard and fast.”

“And why do we do it this way?”

“Because the herd is an organism that must be cultivated, but to defend them from all danger is to make them complacent, and when the monsters do show up, some will die, for sometimes the monsters are too fast. The cows will die if they don’t understand that they are always under threat from monsters.”

Jane almost wanted to add, ‘And isn’t that a poignant message against integration if I ever heard one’. But she did not, for these people were not here to hear her opinions on politics, and she was not here to give them. She just wanted to get on top of a cow and feel the wind in her hair as they rode off into the sunset, or at least raced a good kilometer upon the open plains.

But from what she was seeing, Pale Cow’s cows were more of a ‘barely mobile food storage system’, than ‘powerhouses on four legs’. Which was pretty much on point for ‘what is a cow’, so Jane only had herself to blame for that unrealistic outlook on what guarding the cows would mean.

Amasar nodded. “Correct. Let us test to see if you are good on cowback, and when we ride north, you will ride with us.”

Jane’s heart skipped a beat, but she calmly said, “Ah? I’ll be able to ride today?” She glanced to the other cowherds in the group. Other people were surprised with Amasar’s announcement, too. Jane turned back. “I was under the impression that I could not.”

One of the other cowherds, Iroki, said, “It is one year of learning and caring for the herd and then another year of learning how to fight as a group with the rest of us before anyone is allowed to ride in front of the clan. We are the spear, Amasar.” He glanced to Jane, then back to Amasar, saying, “She can tend to the milking and the cheese yurt like everyone else at her level.”

“I’m fine with learning how to make cheese.” Jane said, “I love cheese.”

Amasar said, “I am the herd leader. I enforce the rules. Jane will ride out front, with us, and let no one countermand my order.”

Iroki frowned, then said, “It will be as you say.” He looked to Jane, then disregarded her.

The other cowherds were similarly miffed as Iroki, but none of them said a single word.

Amasar ignored the brewing discontent in his midst, and turned to the herd. “We call out to our mounts and they respond as they are wont. If a cow responds to you, you will learn to ride. If not, you will not. The caravan departs in two hours.”

And then he whistled to the herd, a long, shrill sound that he split into warbles. The call carried on the wind, into the mass of cows. The animals perked up. Some of them disregarded the whistle, moving away from the cowherds, but others raised their heads above the crowd, and bleated into the air. Those ones moved forward.

Those ones to first respond were also the closest ones to Amasar and the group, for they had been quietly trailing Amasar and the other cowherds this whole time. They wanted a ride, and they knew where to be to get it.

Amasar explained, “Cows are smart. They take a bit of training in the beginning, but the ones who want to ride will come forward, and the ones who do not will go away. We do not name them, for that is bad luck. Do not name the cow who comes to you, if such a miracle occurs. All outsiders do that, and we cannot allow this.” He stepped away from the other cowherds while holding out a hand toward the approaching cows. He clicked his tongue and two of the cows rushed toward him, with a light blonde one winning out over the light brown one. The light brown one went to the other nearest person, who happened to be Iroki. Amasar petted the one who came to him, while speaking to Jane, “Accept the one that approaches, like this—” He scratched the chin and face of the animal, moving his hands to the side, scratching the neck, as he, too, moved to the cow’s side. He reached the middle of the animal, and then hopped on, carefully easing his weight down onto the animal’s back. He bunched his hand in the ruff of blonde fur on the cow’s neck. “And that is all there is to it. We train them all from birth to—” The cow under him mooed lightly and began to amble, but Amasar clenched his hand, and his legs, and the cow stopped. He admonished the animal, saying, “We train most of them well enough.”

Jane was entranced. She watched as riders took their mounts, and as more and more cows ambled out of the herd, hurrying, as if realizing that there wouldn’t be enough riders for them if they didn’t rush forward and claim a person.

Except none of them came for Jane. Well. One did, but the cow sniffed at her and then turned away. Within minutes, every cowherd was atop a cow, and all the other cows were already walking away; miffed that they didn’t get a rider.

Jane felt a tension in her chest that she hadn’t felt in a long time. It was a sickly sort of feeling. A small feeling. A feeling of minimization. Ah, yeah. She was crushed. How silly was that? She was sad that the cows didn’t like her? Well of course they didn’t—

Jane said, “Ah. This is why you must work with the cows for a year before riding, isn’t it?”

Amasar frowned a little, as he confirmed her theory, saying, “I had hoped that they would just accept you, but they have not. My apologies, Jane.”

Iroki looked vindicated, sitting there atop his own cow, but his voice was not smug, as he said, “I work in the cheese yurt every morning. You will need to wake up earlier in order to participate in the milking, to get to know the cows. As you learn of the cows, they will learn of you.”

Amasar said, “You may head back to the caravan. We have rounds to do before we leave. Find some stragglers and bring them back.”

Jane turned and bowed to Amasar, saying, “Thank you for your instruction.”

And then she turned and walked back the way they had come.

Amasar, Iroki, and the others, tapped their cows, and the cows responded with crashing hooves that ripped up the grassland, and propelled them forward. The wind raced through their hair as the cows let loose their power.

They moved a lot faster than Jane had expected them to move.

And Jane was just a milkmaid.

… On the way back to the herd, Jane realized that it was all kinda funny, actually. She knew she was more than a milkmaid. She was so very, very much more than that. But sure! She could milk some cows! She had expected to do that, anyway. She could even learn how to make some cheese. She had never done that before. It might be fun! If nothing else, it was another skill to add to her resume, not that anyone used those here on Veird. Heh.

Jane giggled to herself, while cows mooed all around her—

Oh. Wait.

Did Amasar do that on purpose? Did he try to make himself look like he was doing well by her, and then, by extension, doing well by her father? But then again… He did say that he knew the cows would not go to her, but that he would try anyway.

Jane was probably seeing shadows where there were none.

Their first night in the caravan had been rather welcoming, but it had been a rote welcome. No one wanted Erick or any of them there, but Clan Pale Cow was more than willing to be neighborly. The problem was that Clan Pale Cow, like most other grass traveler clans, simply did not approve of the open use of magic.

But Jane was a Polymage, and her father was an archmage.

So a bit of cultural dissonance was to be expected! But they were traveling the world right now. This much was fine, and besides that, Clan Pale Cow was doing their very best to be welcoming. Jane could only do her best, too.

- - - -

Teressa felt strange to be here. How did she even get into this scenario? They were going after dragons, but now Erick was trying to be a part of a grass traveler clan? And sure, Teressa understood the connection that Erick was trying to exploit, to force the dragons out into the open, but still…

This was weird, wasn’t it?

It all felt so… surreal.

The Worldly Path was involved, for sure, but still…

Teressa suddenly realized, halfway through her talk, that she barely understood how she had gotten to this place, and thus she stopped talking.

Life was weird, sometimes.

Weird, and kinda wonderful.

The smallest child of the group asked, “What’s a Moon Reacher!”

Teressa came back to the moment, surrounded by twelve kids, each of them looking up to her like she was a strangeness that they could not wrap their heads around. Part of their attention was locked to her because of the Blessing of Aloethag, but Teressa had mitigated much of that by wearing a veil. Most of their attention was, thankfully, focused on the lesson that Teressa was trying to give, but Teressa had lost the thread of her focus as the unreality of the moment finally hit home.

She played off her momentary lapse, pitching her voice low and full of terror, as she spread her arms wide, and said, “I lost myself for a moment there, children. Maybe there was a moon reacher nearby.” Some of the children recoiled a little at that. Some of them just went wide-eyed, and even more attentive. “Those monsters are some of the Darkest evils in the world, though you would never know it to look at them. With their long, bendy arms and tiny hands, they rise above it all, and cloud your mind as they reach down as though from the moons, to pluck at your flesh and your thoughts.” She used one hand to mime the plucking of her own fingers, folding the finger down after she ‘plucked’ it. “Pulling and ripping off limbs, laughing at you from up above, you will never know what killed you and your entire party unless you are trained to exacting detail. It is the small things that let you know that you are under attack.” By now, she had folded over all the fingers of one hand. “If they plucked off my fingers like this, I would think that I had lived my whole life without those fingers. But here is the detail: I would know something was wrong, because I used my sword in this hand, but how could I hold a sword if I had no fingers? It is this detail that alerts me to the wrongness of the moment; that there might be a moon reacher exuding their [Thought Fog] all over the place.”

The kids were absolutely entranced. Some would probably have nightmares, but nightmares were better than death; one needed to know of the Darkness if they were to overcome it.

Their teacher, an older man by the name of Vorilo, held great disapproval in his eyes as he sat there in the back of the room, watching over Teressa’s lesson on monsters of the world. But he didn’t say anything; he knew this was going to be a difficult lesson. Talking about monsters always was. The two of them, along with Clan Leader Niyazo, had talked earlier about what Teressa was going to say to the kids, to fulfill her obligation to support the clan while she lived with them.

Teressa opened her hand, showing her fingers as still there. Some of the kids gasped, and Teressa had to fight off a smile because it would throw her off her tale, no matter if the kids couldn’t actually see her smile through her veil.

Kids were so easy to entertain.

Teressa said, “Depending on how I was positioned in a group, I would have two responses. If I was here, with my boss, Archmage Flatt, and we were to encounter some Moon Reachers, then we would slay them all. Aside from all our other defenses, Ophiel has no mind with which to Fog, and so, we would know the problem even if all the rest of us could not see the problem.”

Vorilo cringed.

The kids loved the idea of fighting the moon reachers, of killing the problem. Some of them even started slashing the air with imaginary swords. But this was not the correct solution for the vast, vast majority of people. Teressa needed to adjust what she had said.

And so, she continued, “—But looking to slay moon reachers is not the proper response for anyone who is not prepared for them. The best solution is to run away, to live to fight another day. This is always the correct solution when you are under attack from an assailant you cannot comprehend.”

The kids did not like this. Some even voiced their displeasure with ‘But why!’ and ‘I’m never running from a fight!’.

Vorilo relaxed a bit, but he was still on edge.

With a relaxed, yet directed tone, Teressa singled out the kid who spoke of never running. “Boy.” The boy instantly looked to her and his eyes went wide, for Teressa was purposefully glowing her eyes with grey light. The effect wasn’t much, but it would be visible through her veil for at least this single child. “Know your limits before you encounter the unknown. Know when to run, and make sure everyone else also knows when to run.” The boy just stared, going weak in the bladder a bit, but otherwise doing okay. A bit of terror now is worth a lot of saved blood later. Teressa relaxed her eyes, and turned her face back toward the whole group, saying, “Learn how to fight and how to live while you are safe, and surrounded by loved ones. Don’t make other people sad because you lost your life fighting what you knew you should not fight.”

Vorilo nodded, but remained silent.

And then Teressa went off script, a bit, “Until a year ago, I thought I knew everything there was to know about fighting. I was a tank, protecting Spur in the army, holding the front lines against Ar’Kendrithyst and the Shades—”

Vorilo paled at the mention of the world’s oldest enemies. All of the kids were stock still, watching Teressa speak of Evils, and likely feeling rather odd about it. Their own parents never spoke of these things. Most of the world never spoke of Ar’Kendrithyst, except to talk around the problem.

Teressa was not about that.

She said, “But then I met Erick, and I gained a new appreciation for certain things. Like magic. I learned so much, and I can do so much more than what I was able to do before. You should learn everything you can, and you can protect your loved ones, too. Learn how to expand your senses into the mana. Learn aura control. Learn the sword, but above all, learn the shield. And don’t shy away from the smaller magics. They will save your life. That’s why Rozeta shares the magics made by one person, with every person.

“But don’t think you have to go large to protect your brother, or your sister, or your parents, from the evils of monsters and the Dark. There is no need for anything more than the smallest power, wielded properly. My boss made his magic out of the smallest parts of all. Tiny, invisible particles that make up all the world around us. He mastered that magic, and used that magic to kill all the Shades, and a million other monsters, including all the moon reachers of the Forest of Glaquin. Hundreds of thousands of monsters, all dead, at his hand. All because of him.”

The kids remained enthralled the whole time Teressa spoke.

Vorilo almost interrupted when Teressa went off script, but he refrained. At the end, he even looked a bit… hopeful, perhaps?

A boy, one of the most energetic of the lot, asked in a small voice, “Is he really from another world?”

Vorilo readily spoke up, “We’re talking of monsters and how to prepare against them. Think not of archmages, children.” He added, to Teressa, “It would be nice if you told them that moon reachers don’t live around here.”

While some kids complained—

Teressa said, “Your teacher is right. It is important to know the types of monsters out there in order to defend against them, but knowing how to defend and being able to defend are two different things. I can help you with the former, but with the latter, you must look to your elders and your own people.”

Vorilo smiled a little at that, then he stepped away, returning to the back of the room.

Teressa said, “One of the weakest monsters inside Ar’Kendrithyst is the shadowolf. They are muscle and bone and exposed flesh, wrapped in shadowy mange. They stalk through the kendrithyst crystal, hunting in packs, looking for easy prey. It is easy to get overwhelmed if you do not have the magical and martial power to fend them off, but they are only level 10 to 15, and they are stupid. Like the most basic of monsters, shadowolves come straight at you, with only one or two circling behind for a flanking strike. Their tactics are standard, and if you’ve fought one, you’ve fought them all.” She dropped her voice, saying, “But woe to thee if you should meet a pack of wolves that are overseen by a shadowcat. These dastardly felines are an abomination of shadow, and they lace their hundred-meter long tails into the skulls of lesser monsters, controlling them as one would control a hundred puppets at once.”

The kids were wide eyed.

More than a few would have nightmares, for sure, but that was fine.

Teressa talked of monsters, and the kids learned through their terror, just as she had been taught herself… Well. Mostly. When Teressa was younger she had been taught the best magics to use against certain monsters, right alongside learning about those monsters for the first time. If it was up to Teressa, she’d include things like ‘Shadowolves burn real good, so be sure to use Flaming spells on your weapons’, and ‘Even if you can’t cast much magic, you must have [Teleport], and you must always be able to cast it at least on yourself in case of an emergency’. These were facts that these kids should know, but which were kept from them.

But at least these kids wouldn’t be coddled behind walls like the Highlands did to all of their people.

It’s too bad most of them would never learn about magic, though.

- - - -

Erick sat beside Poi and sipped his coffee, while he glanced out over the clan and the herd, through Ophiel. The clan and their herd was spread out over several kilometers, with cows grazing everywhere, or else drinking water in the small tributary nearby, which was the reason that the clan had stopped here for the night. There was no riverside near this stop, but there was a riverside at the next stop, 30 kilometers away. Once the clan got there they’d be [Grow]ing crops to refill the cold boxes.

Erick decided he wanted to help with that; not only to get some of his own favorite foods into his own cold boxes, but to introduce some variety into Clan Pale Cow, to see how they like chocolate, and vanilla, and other spices, as well as lemons and potatoes. Ah, yes! Potatoes. Much better than whiteroot. Whiteroot was just too stringy.

He asked Poi, “So why are you in here, and not out there doing some small job, like everyone else? I’m pretty sure we’re as safe as could possibly be.”

Poi paused, and then said, “I thought that I would help with cooking, with Nirzir. But after being rushed out of the kitchens last night when it tried to help… I decided to guard you, instead.”

“And I appreciate it.” Erick nodded. “But about Pale Cow. It’s the hypocrisy that’s getting to you, isn’t it?”

Poi froze a little, then thawed, and said, “Most people are hypocrites and some people are worse than others, but these people… It’s bad. Painful to be around, to tell the truth. Everyone is using magic all the time, but everyone lies about it and hides it from everyone else.”

Erick chuckled. “Yeah. It’s kinda weird, isn’t it? The kitchens are full of [Ward]s of all types, but everyone is using [Cleanse] on their yurts to keep them clean, or [Ferment] to make mead, or [Mend] when they tear something, and don’t forget the conjured Force when they have to fight something.” Erick guessed, “Maybe this cultural phenomenon stems from the general taboo regarding casting the magics in front of other people? But taken to an extreme? Maybe it’s not actually hypocrisy… maybe.”

Poi frowned a little. “Perhaps.”

“Well, whatever it is...” Erick said, “I’m not gonna let it stop me from defending myself properly. I’m going to make a yurt, and it’s gonna be pretty darn magical. Got any requests? You want your own room? I’m pretty sure I’m gonna have to give Nirzir her own room.”

“Don’t make it anything special, at all.” Poi said, “Make it normal sized, and exactly in the style of everyone else’s yurt. That means no separate rooms for anyone. Just one central room with the firepit in the center, and an opening at the top to let out the smoke. A [Prismatic Ward] inside the space is good enough defense.”

“… I guess that’s one way to go about it.” Erick considered his other necessary spellwork, and said, “Perhaps I can throw in some Mana Altering for Illusion when I make the [Spectral Cow] spell. Make them look as normal as possible?”

“That would also be for the best.”

Erick breathed deep, then stood up, saying, “Time to get to work!”

A great big thud shook the ground outside, as Ophiel deposited the raw material needed to make the yurt.

“At least we’re a good hundred meters from the rest of the caravan.” Poi said, “But I guess there was no way to get the eternal stonewood here other than to blip it in, was there.”

Erick smiled, said, “Everyone blips around inside their yurts, anyway, Poi. I’m just being more open about it.”

A large-sized boulder of the material in question rested on the ground, not twenty meters from the [Obscuring Redoubt]. Erick had scooped the boulder off of the small clan mountain he had made upon the plains and Shaped into a copy of his house in Spur. The boulder would serve well as a yurt, considering that eternal stonewood was stronger than stone, and about the same weight as oak.

People on the porches of the caravan were looking his way, though for the most part, all they could see was Erick and his new boulder. The [Obscuring Redoubt] was invisible to everyone not tagged to be able to see the spell.

Poi followed Erick out of the [Obscuring Redoubt], and Erick saw a few quiet surprises on the faces of the onlookers. To them, Poi’s appearance was like a man appearing out of nowhere; quite terrifying, actually. These people had some strange ideas about magic… Very strange, actually. Maybe one of them would be willing to talk to him about their culture? Later?

But anyway—

Erick asked, “Did you like sleeping in the Redoubt?”

“It was fine.” Poi said, “It will serve well when we move on from this land and are forced to hide to have any measure of true safety. But the Redoubt should only have one room, too. It’s both a boon and a liability to have everyone in the same space, but I feel that the boon outweighs the danger.”

“Hmm. Fair.”

Erick turned to the boulder, and considered how he would Shape it.

From what Erick had seen in videos on the internet now and again, the yurt of a grass traveler was not exactly like the yurts of the people back on Earth. Those Earth yurts were oftentimes grey because they were made with wool coverings, or other cloth-like wrappings. Some of the more expensive yurts on Earth were white canvas, with decorations on the outside, but mostly, decorations were reserved for the interior, in the forms of carpets and other fabrics.

The yurts of the grass travelers were similar to all the expensive, decorated and professional yurts that existed on Earth. But with one major difference, of course. Sometime in the distant past, someone on Veird had gotten the bright idea to make carts that could tow the yurts, and thus the ability for a yurt to be taken down, to be moved somewhere else, was no longer a concern. The yurts of the grass travelers became more solid constructions, with an odd yurt here and there actually having two stories; though those oddities were reserved for special buildings, like the hawkery.

Erick vaguely recalled that the people of Earth had mobile yurts, too, but for the richest of people and mostly in the ancient past of Mongolia, or places like that. But then again, Erick barely remembered if he had read that, or if he was conflating that idea with what he was seeing before him.

The yurts of modern day grass travelers were all mobile houses. They were all colorful things of love and dedication, with each one unique in their beauty and personality. For starters, only half of the fabrics that went into the construction of a yurt came from the [Grow]ing of cottonfruit, producing a stark white fabric that was the outside of the yurt. Onto that whiteness, the people of Clan Pale Cow had embroidered colorful thread made from their wool-producing cows. Every single white yurt had decorations of all kinds, mostly composed of flowers, or clouds, or cows, or geometric designs.

In the light of a new day, and after having a relaxing night, Erick was actually able to see the beauty in the yurts all around him. The people took a lot of care with their own appearances, too. Only the warriors of the tribe wore leathers and furs. Most people wore layers of plain white cloth, while their outermost layers had little flowers embroidered upon the hems, or vests with expansive geometric designs.

The carpets of every house, many of which were laid out on the front porches, were works of art. The leather flaps that served as doors each had designs upon them, and each house’s design was unique. Not a single thing in this land was mass produced. Everyone made their own stuff, or at least everyone added their own touches to their own stuff. As Erick looked out, he even saw people embroidering onto their yurts at this very moment, either to repair old designs, or to make new ones.

But, looking more clinically and with an eye toward information gathering, every yurt was constructed more or less the same.

The average construction was a circular room about ten meters across, with gently angled flat walls that went to a mansard-like roof, with a hole in the center of that roof that could be closed with the flipping of a cap. The materials that made a yurt were wooden supports, attached to varying rings of wood. The largest wooden ring was ten meters across, serving as the base of the structure, while the smallest was only a meter across, serving as the hole in the top. The white fabrics that surrounded every wooden frame were the same, and every house had the same layered system; from the inside to the outside, there was a layer of white fabric, the inner wooden frame, a layer of loose wool to act as an insulator, the outer wooden frame, and then two layers of outer fabric with both being waterproof.

The cart under every yurt was more or less the same, too.

They were seven meters in width, but eleven in length, with the yurt positioned directly in the middle so that there was a porch-like space in both the front and the back, with the front porch being where the cows would be hitched, and where the driver would sit. The two axles of the vehicle were located at meter two and meter eight.

The wheels might not be hard to understand, but the axles and their suspension systems were complicated, and there was no way the people here made those. Firstly, they looked forged. But also, they were layers of arced and braced-together metal, suspended on an undercarriage that was fully replaceable, and looked to be screwed on to the yurt’s bottom. They were not custom made for each vehicle. Clan Pale Cow either traded for those suspension systems, or they had workshops somewhere else for some other clan members to do some heavy forging, because there were no forges in this caravan.

Their suspensions were easy enough to understand, though, and even if Erick didn’t do the forging properly, he could temper the metal in other ways… But there was a lotta metal down there.

Erick didn’t have any metal.

He could make some wooden suspension, probably? Each yurt must have weighed at least three tons or more, and while eternal stonewood could easily support that much weight, eternal stonewood was not normal wood.

When Erick built the clan mountain for Red Ledger, there were a few things he had to keep in mind during the construction, like ensuring that the mountain was one continuous piece. When a mass of eternal stonewood was large enough, it was able to ‘heal’ itself through small damages, such as temperature stresses and the moving of people, but this healing was less in the way of automatic [Mend]s (which was a whole other problem), and more in the way of ‘ignoring through illusions’ all the damage being done to it.

The problem of [Mend] and eternal stonewood was that [Mend] worked on unliving things, but large masses of eternal stonewood were ‘alive’, and so, [Mend] should not work on a clan mountain. Erick supposed that this ‘alive’ functionality of the clan mountains blurred the lines well enough to allow [Mend] to function, but still, that blurring was odd, once one knew enough about what they were seeing.

Was Illusion magic some kind of a Schrodinger's Cat thing?

Interesting, if true.

But anyway. Eternal Stonewood used in small portions (like that which was the size of a yurt and cart) was very much deadwood, and so, any suspension he made for his yurt, that he made out of wood, would be subject to all the problems of wood that was practically unbendable.

And suspension systems needed to be bendable to work.

Erick quickly decided that he was not even going to try and make some ‘bendable’ wooden suspension systems. To try that was to ensure that he had a bad time. He simply needed to ask someone where they got their suspension systems, and he could go buy one. They probably came from several suppliers in Songli, right? And besides! This would be a good time to get to know some people. Perhaps they wouldn’t run away from him this time? One could only hope.

Erick glanced around, and locked on his target. The target was a neighbor, about a hundred and ten meters away, currently brushing down some cows, getting them happy and ready to pull his yurt. That man probably knew about the suspension systems for his yurt. Erick took a step—

Air springs.

He stopped.

… Air springs were rather rigid structures that—

No. Wait. Air springs needed rubber, and they were very much not rigid. Not going to work. And how did that work, anyway? They were like… Okay. So. The axle of the vehicle was on a floating arm that was offset from the axle, and that could move up and down, but between where the axle met the frame of the vehicle, there was a rubber balloon-like structure that could fill with air as needed. ‘As needed’ was determined by some computer sensors, usually, but it should be possible to use a [Conjure Force Elemental] and Elemental Ooze to make some sort of balloon-like substitute—

Nope. Erick decided against going that route.

He could probably do a lot with magic. He could make a vehicle that worked exactly as he wanted, which allowed for a perfectly smooth ride. But that would be rather showy, wouldn’t it? And showy magic would be rude. No need to be rude.

Besides, he could probably just use [Control Machine] on whatever suspension systems everyone else was using in order to create a mostly smooth ride. He had made [Control Machine] back when he made chocolate but he barely used it, except for when he made the phonograph. Oh! Now there was a nice bit of non-magical technology that might be good to show off around here. Maybe they’d like the mechanical nature of it? Record players weren’t magical at all, after all.

Last night, more than a few people got out their instruments to try and get a small music group happening, but then Ophiel joined in—

Ah.

Erick had made a lot of missteps last night. Oh well. He could be more circumspect about his magic. Erick headed toward the man brushing down the cows, with Poi following close behind.

It didn’t take long to get near enough to the target and his house.

The man’s wife, who was on their porch breastfeeding their baby, saw Erick coming their way. She said something to the man down on the ground, and the man whipped around to see Erick.

The man froze like someone had cast [Stop] upon him. And then he blinked, and animated again, only to look left and right, trying to guess if Erick was walking at him, or toward someone nearby. The wife helpfully clued her husband in that Erick was walking exactly this way.

“You parked us here for this reason, Zan.” the wife whispered/hissed.

The man turned, glared lightly at his wife, whispering, “Yes, Solia. This is what I wanted.” Then Zan turned back toward Erick. He was all gentle smiles.

Erick had yet to get within 50 meters of the man, and already he was thinking this was a mistake. But Erick pressed on!

Ten meters away, Zan called out, “How does the sun greet you, Archmage Flatt?”

It was a bit of an archaic, polite greeting, but Erick had caught on enough here and there to respond, “With as much warmth and light as I hope it does you, Herder Zan.”

Zan flinched at the saying of his name.

Erick added, “And you as well, Herder Solia.”

Solia flinched half a foot into the air, her baby coming undone from her breast and giving a tiny cry. Without missing a moment, Solia gave an excuse that the baby must have messed himself and then she retreated into her yurt, escaping from the gaze of the archmage.

Zan ignored the disturbance behind him, asking, “Uh. How can this one help you?”

Erick ignored the drama, and said, “I’d like to know where you got the suspensions for your yurt. Everyone seems to have the same ones, and you’re the closest, and yours looks the newest, so I thought I’d ask you, first.”

Zan paused, his eyes going wide. “Uh. Leader Niyazo gets them for us. Usually as wedding gifts for the founding of a new yurt. That’s where we got ours a year ago. Uh. I’m not sure how you would get four of them?”

Erick nodded, saying, “Thank you for the directions.” Erick already knew where Niyazo’s yurt was, so he turned that way, and gave a farewell to Zan, “Blessings to you and your new family.”

Zan piped up, “Uh! Can I— Can I have a moment of your time?”

Erick turned to the man. “Certainly.”

Zan instantly said, “Thank you for helping to find my mother’s killer. The face stealer had her face for the past three months, but I knew she was wrong. She was always such a wonderful mo—” Sudden tears streamed down his face, and his voice cracked, but he kept talking through the lump that settled in his throat, “She was a wonderful mother, and person. She’d do anything for you, and you’d do anything for her in return. She was never a burden. She was always a boon. But then she just changed. Overnight. At first, we didn’t think anything of it because people change, sometimes. But it was bad and— We caught her looking at our child and—” He stopped crying, as his face turned hard. He said, “And then Songli tracked a face stealer through to our shared home. They found the thing posing as my mother…” He looked up to Erick. “Thank you. Who knows what the monster would have done if you weren’t here.” He rapidly added, “I couldn’t say anything last night. But now… Thank you.”

Erick had not expected that. For a moment, he felt as if any push at all would topple him to the ground, for the man’s pure conviction and relief was almost a palpable force upon the air. Erick eventually found some words, and said, “I’m sorry that happened to your mother. She sounds like a wonderful woman.”

Zan blinked out another tear. “She was. Thank you.” He paused, then added, “Uh. Good day to you, Archmage Flatt.”

Erick nodded, then resumed his walk toward Niyazo’s yurt, keeping his face as expressionless as he could, and his breathing even.

Two minutes later, Erick was walking by a different yurt, with different people brushing down different cows, when an interruption appeared.

A young girl who had been eyeing his walk all this while, stepped away from her cow, calling out, “Archmage Flatt!”

Erick stopped, and turned to the girl. She had to be 14, perhaps. “Yes? Can I help you?”

Like a triumphant merchant, the girl said, “Yes you can! I want—”

The girl’s mother, who was also brushing down the cows, rapidly interceded, stepping between the girl and Erick, saying, “Please pay her no mind, esteemed Archmage. She is a precocious child who knows not with whom she speaks.”

Erick experienced a whiplash of emotions, as he read the face of the concerned woman in front of him, and came to the conclusion that the woman thought that he was going to harm her daughter. Erick was almost offended—

But the girl was apparently offended, too, and on Erick’s behalf, no less. She shouted, “He’s not gonna hurt me, Ma! You shouldn’t listen to those storytellers so much!”

Erick said, “I assure you, madam, that I would never hurt a child unless they were secretly a dragon, or a Shade, or a Hunter in disguise. And only if they were out to harm me, or others, first. I believe my track record is rather solid when it comes to these facts.”

The girl looked less sure of herself as Erick added caveat after caveat. The woman’s eyes simply went wide.

Erick added, “Now why did you call out to me, young lady?”

Emboldened, the girl hopped around her mother and declared, “I want some pretty night lights! Can you do it?”

The mother looked both scandalized and deeply embarrassed. She wanted to run away, but she did not.

Erick simply gave a tiny smile, and asked the girl, “In what colors, and in what designs?”

At that, the mother’s grip on her brush failed. The hairy instrument tumbled to the ground, and the woman left it there, as she turned, and walked away from the situation. The girl’s older brothers had stopped brushing their cows to watch whatever was happening with their sister, but at Erick’s question their casual interest turned into incredible, unspoken jealousy.

The girl didn’t notice that. All she did was exclaim, “Bright orange and white and yellow! Like fire! Something to see with at night! Something to drive away the dark!”

“How about I make one for each of you kids?” Erick asked the boys behind the girl, “Would you like that?”

The boys’ jealousy evaporated like mist under the sun.

One of them said, almost sadly, asked, “Can you do blue, like the ocean? I ain’t never seen the ocean.”

The second boy, desiring to hurt his sister, said, “I want fire, but bigger than Cor’s!”

The young girl, Cor, turned to her brother and promptly started cursing at him like a sailor.

The mother looked their way, briefly, then turned away, muttering about how she can’t save them from themselves all the time. The boy who had asked for the water globe seemed to mirror these sentiments.

Erick, meanwhile, had already had an Ophiel shape some eternal stonewood into tiny pellets, and then had him attach the requested lightwards to those pellets. He did not make the boy’s fire larger than the girl’s, both were ten centimeter wide spheres, but he did make two that were slightly different from each other. One was more for reading, with better ambient light, but the other was flashier, with tiny sparkles in the fire. Erick was happier with the water orb lightward, though, for it looked to him like a world made of water, but when gazed at from outer space. Whorls of clouds hung in the sky, forming miniature storms and air currents, while the waves of the water’s surface reflected whatever light was around, sparkling like a proper ocean. The boy would need very good eyesight to see all of what Erick had packed into that tiny, ten centimeter blue sphere, though.

With a flicker, and before the girl’s tirade got going and the boy was forced to give a response, Ophiel came to Erick’s side in a step of light, floating there with the three stones in his lightgrip. The wardlights for those stones floated above them, one sparking, one glowing, and one oceanic.

The girl stopped talking. The fire boy’s clenched fists relaxed as his eyes went wide. The ocean boy smiled a little as he gazed upon the blue sphere.

Erick had Ophiel extend the ocean wardlight to the ocean boy, saying, “Here you go. It’ll last for a while, but not forever.”

The boy tried to grab the sphere, itself, but his hands passed through it, and his entire persona went from happy, to crushed in an instant, thinking that a trick had been played on him. The brother and sister saw this happen, too, and were instantly angry at Erick. Erick almost laughed at that; At least they could come together against a common enemy. But he did not. Their anger was genuine, even if it was misplaced by mistake.

Before they could get mad, Erick said, “Grab the stone under the light. The [Ward] is attached to the stone, so that you might set it somewhere and have it float where you set it.”

The kids paused their anger.

“Oh.” The boy grabbed the stone, and the lightward came away from Ophiel’s grip. “Heh.” The boy wiggled the stone around, and the lightward wiggled around with it, but Erick had made this one special, and the water actually broke from the surface of the sphere, like an ocean exploding into the sky. “Woah,” went the kid, as he stilled the rock, and the ocean settled down. He looked to Erick, saying, “Thank you, Archmag—”

“Which one is for me!” said the fire boy.

The fire girl said, “I want that one!”

“You want the ugly one?!” Fire boy said, “Fine by me! I want the pretty one!”

Oh thank god. It worked out like Erick hoped it would.

He handed the prizes to their respective kids, saying, “There’s no inherent magic to any of them, besides being lightwards. Don’t expect them to save your life, or anything. Low magic, like these items, doesn’t work like that. Low magic works exactly as you want it to work, and these are just lights. That is all.”

The girl looked disappointed for a moment, but inside their yurt, their mother was deeply relieved.

Fire boy said, “Duh! I knew that!”

The girl didn’t care about her brother’s words. She only had eyes for her wardlight, except when she looked up and rapidly said, “You’re alright.” And then she went back to staring at her prize. She wiggled it back and forth, and the light broke apart and came back together almost like the ocean sphere had, but the effect was much less pronounced.

Erick walked on, leaving the kids to their new toys.

The other yurts of the caravan were spread a fair bit apart from each other, but they were all close enough for the more inquisitive people to notice that Erick was walking through ‘town’, talking to whoever approached. And there were a lot of inquisitive people; someone always had eyes on the horizon and ears open, searching for signs of monsters.

There were none more inquisitive than those of the hawking yurts, which were easy to tell apart from all the other yurts due to their two story structure, and their wooden walls, instead of walls made of canvas. The hawking yurt of this main branch of Clan Pale Cow was raised even higher than the norm, with a raised platform above the second floor, so that people could stand on top and keep eyes out with [Ultrasight] and other abilities. All the real grass traveler clans used hawks to send official messages around to each other, as well as patrol for monsters from the sky. In that way, the hawkery was as much a mailroom, as it was a radar station.

And since Erick was walking past the hawkery to get to Niyazo’s yurt, they very much knew he was passing by.

The flap to the hawking yurt flew open and a man rushed outside. He was a heavily muscular man, more so than normal, and as he put his hands on the railing of his yurt he locked eyes on Erick, making sure that he was seeing who he was seeing. He called out, “Ho! Archmage Flatt! Spare a moment, please!”

Erick turned toward his walk toward the hawking yurt, asking, “Can I help you?”

The man excitedly said, “None of my hawks have seen any monsters all last night or even today! Did you kill them all?”

Erick stopped before the man, looking up to say, “Yes, I did.” And then, to circumvent the man’s next question, he added, “I couldn’t sleep so I took care of the problem that was making me unable to sleep. I am charged with defense of Pale Cow while I am here, after all.”

“Ha!” The hawker laughed, then he turned to see a woman come out of the yurt behind him. “Did you hear that! I was right, Uli! You owe me a dinner!”

The man seemed boisterous, while the woman, Uli, was not. She was older and stern of face, and rather thin, but when she spoke, it was with kindness. “Then that merely means that you only owe me three dinners, for you always base your guesses on the weakest of evidence.” Uli turned from her coworker, to look at Erick. “Thank you for killing the Abyss Drinkers. We never notice those until after they’ve grabbed a cow or three, and then retreated so far down that we can’t give proper chase. Nasty things.” She glanced around, looking at other yurts in the near distance. “I suppose it’s time to get some cows to harness. Let’s get to it, Heizel.” Uli hopped off of the side of the yurt then gave a tiny bow to Erick, before she headed off toward the herd.

“Right!” Heizel followed the woman, landing with a great thud upon the ground, but he turned back after a moment and called to Erick, “It was nice to meet you! I feel we owe you many dinners, so come on by sometime! My hawks always hunt up some nice lizards!” And then he turned back and raced after Uli, who had already gone rather far ahead.

Three seconds later, the cry of a large bird chattered out of the second floor of the hawkery, and then the door at the top flapped open, and a beautiful golden brown bird chased after his people, following Uli and Heizel, crying about being left behind. Other birds inside the yurt called out as well, seeming to complain about the complainer.

Erick smiled a little, wondering if he was anthropomorphising the hawks, or not. He guessed he was, but that much was fine. He continued walking toward Clan Leader Niyazo’s yurt. Ophiel, sitting on Erick’s shoulder, just watched the other birds, without doing much except to give a tiny mimic of the golden hawk’s whining cry. Erick patted him on the head, and he pressed into Erick’s hand.

He walked on.

Koori was outside of her yurt, along with several cows, and several people brushing down those cows. Each animal had canvas bags of grain attached to their faces. Koori’s cow turned toward Erick, swinging his horns around, which earned him a stern grab upon the horns from Koori’s solid hand, stilling the cow’s movement. She let him go when he didn’t fight her.

Koori glanced Erick’s way, but turned back to her cow, while calling to him, “My husband is with my daughter Iylea at the cheese yurt. I believe your daughter is there, too. I think they are both learning to milk the cows and make the cheese. But if that is not what you were after, can I help you with something?”

Her words had hard edges, but Erick was surprised to see that she was much less antagonistic than she was yesterday. Or even last night. Something had changed. She, like many others, had seen Erick walk her way, and she had seen him interact with the other clansmen, so maybe she approved? Or maybe she approved of the systematic killing of monsters? Whatever the case, it was a nice change.

Erick readily said, “I am making myself a yurt and a vehicle, and I want to know where to get a set of the large suspensions that everyone else has.”

Koori’s brushing paused. Then she continued, and half turned toward Erick. “You aren’t going to magic up a solution? I saw how easily you gave magic to those kids.”

“There will be magic involved, but I want to keep that to a minimum in consideration of your traditions, thus, the need for mundane suspension.” Erick wanted to make these people as comfortable as possible, for now, because when the dragons showed, no one was going to be happy with him. “I admit that it was a bit rude of me to give those kids those wardlights, but they’re just lights; nothing more than something pretty to look upon.”

“The Lure of Darkness is always just ‘something pretty to look upon’ until it is more than that. Until it corrupts and shreds, and leaves nothing but death and damnation in its wake.” Koori said, “These dragons you are after are supreme examples of this.”

“I completely agree.” Erick said, “But to call every knife a sword and then be scared of every sword is to make it rather difficult to cut a steak.”

Koori’s cow mooed at the mention of steak.

Koori, however, just kept on brushing as she let out a good-natured laugh, then said, “With enough care and cooking, even the toughest steak can be cut with a finger.”

“But then you’d have to use a napkin to clean your fingers. And why make the mess if you don’t have to? And besides: who has time to cook a perfect steak every time?” Erick added, “I can keep up with whatever analogy you wish to pursue, or we can drop the one-upmanship here.”

“We’d all be better off if there were no magic at all.”

Erick found himself speaking a lot harder than he likely meant to, as he said, “In some ways, you are correct, but in others ways, you are not.”

Koori stopped brushing her cow and turned fully toward him. “I understand you come from a world without magic.”

“Aye. This much is public knowledge; yes.”

“And it is true, that you plan on opening [Gate]s to other worlds?”

“That is the far-off plan.”

Koori frowned in thought. She tried to understand him, “Are you trying to get back home?”

“Getting back to Earth is never going to happen, and mostly because I have no idea where Earth is in comparison to Veird. Even if I did find the way back, though, I wouldn’t want to bring the Script to Earth, for magic is way too destructive.”

Koori blinked a few times, unsure if she heard what she had heard. Then she moved on, saying, “We get our drive systems from Clan Metal Rider, who gets the raw materials from a city that no longer exists in Alaralti, east of the Wanzhi River. That city was destroyed by Terror Peaks, and their entire population spelled to death by magics that should not exist. It is my understanding that this destroyed city was where you found Amasar.” She said, “Clan Metal Rider should still have a few suspensions available, but if they do not, then there are other clans that operate in the metal forging trade. Heizel or Uli at the hawkery should know the location of Metal Rider and all the rest. If they fail you, Speaker Yorila would know.”

Erick nodded, saying, “Thank you. Then I go in search of Metal Rider.”

“When you get your yurt up and running, I want to call upon you for a discussion of your words. To know why you think I would not enjoy a world without magic, and why you would not want to inflict magic upon your own world, if it is so great.”

Her words were calm, but she was unsettled, and highly interested in talking. It might be nice to know what she thinks of the Script, and how it could be made better, for new planets meant new manaminers each possibly working a different Script. Obviously, such planning was getting way ahead of himself, but it would be good to look to the future before they got there.

Erick simply said, “Sure. Whenever you wish to talk, I will be available.”

Koori said, “We will be leaving at noon. Do you think you will be ready by then? If you are not, you can ride with our yurt.”

“Thank you for your offer. We might have to take you up on that offer if I can’t find suspension systems for purchase.”

Koori nodded, then went back to brushing her cow. Behind her, other clansmen were done with their brushing. One was already strapping a leather and cushioned-canvas harness around the neck of their own cow. That cow mooed a bit at the weight of the harness, but it was a joyful sound, accompanied with a small up and down happy jerk of the head. The cow was happy to work.

Erick turned around and walked back toward the hawkery.

But Heizel and Uli were still out and about, getting their cows.

Erick went with the other option. He still hadn’t had that private talk with Speaker Yorila, so maybe now was the time.

- - - -

Yorilia and her accompanying apprentices, all three of them, were stationed in the same yurt about a kilometer away from everyone else, on the very edge of the caravan’s mobile borders. It didn’t take long for Erick and Poi to get there, but Yorilia and two of her apprentices were out, gathering some cows for her yurt.

Yorilia’s remaining apprentice was a short, skinny man, with a malformed left arm, who came out of the yurt to stand on the edge of the porch and tell Erick this much, and then to say, “She’ll be back soon.”

Erick listened to the man and was polite with his facial features. He even said, “Thank you, Boril,” in a polite tone, but internally, Erick was completely flabbergasted to see a person with a physical deformity.

He had seen a lot of those on Earth, and he had helped a lot of people to cope with their situations, but on Veird? Rarer than a crystal slime! Magic could fix almost all physical problems, after all. A dozen questions flooded Erick’s mind. He answered those questions himself, almost just a fast, by turning on [Soul Sight], then [True Sight], then [Soul Sight] again.

Boril’s twisted arm conformed to his twisted soul; there were no illusions here.

Apart from the soul damage, which was obviously abnormal, the way the arm grew alongside the soul was normal. The body naturally healed according to what the soul laid down. Erick wasn’t exactly sure how this worked, but that was how it worked, generally.

But! Healing Magic did not work off of the blueprint of the soul. Rats’ soul was all sorts of fucked up, but a weekly treatment of [Greater Treat Wounds] and [Regeneration] healed his body back to normal. If he didn’t get those treatments then his eyesight went bad, first, and then came arthritis in the hands and feet, and then a whole host of other ailments came along, each one increasingly worse than the last. If Rats went untreated for a month, he would die. This was the major reason that Rats became a Healer in the first place.

And so, if Healing Magic worked for Rats, it should work for Boril’s arm, too.

Okay. So. Erick did not need to be involved with this, either, but he had to, so he asked, “Does Healing Magic not work on your arm?”

“Aye; it does not. I’d cut it off, but—” With good nature, Boril shook his withered arm, saying, “I’m attached to it.”

Erick laughed a little, since the man was obviously making a joke, but Erick was uncomfortable in playing along. So he moved on as fast as he could, saying, “Anyway. I came here to locate another clan, to find some suspensions for a yurt I am making. Can you give me the location of Clan Metal Rider? Or anyone else that sells suspension systems for yurts.”

Boril nodded, then looked away, his eyes clouding over as he stared off into the distance. Three seconds later, he came back, and pointed with his bad arm, to the east. “That way. One and a third [Teleport]s. But if you just need a suspension system, everyone around here has at least one replacement rig. We got two spares if you want to pay us back later. Don’t know where you’d get the other two, though. Or the axle, or the brakes. We don’t got none a that.”

Erick had already noticed the replacement parts in everyone’s yurts, but it was nice to hear someone actually offer those extra parts. “Thank you for the offer. I might take you up on that if I can’t get something from Metal Rider, but I’m going to try them first.”

Boril asked, “Do you need some plans for your own yurt?”

Erick grinned. “Already got those, too, but thanks for the offer. Could you tell Yorila that I was here? I still haven’t had that talk with her.”

“Certainly, archmage. Do you want me to let Clan Metal Rider know that you’re coming?”

“You can call me Erick, and no, you don’t have to tell them. Not unless you think notice would be needed? I plan on showing up and buying what they have available. Would that be a problem?”

Boril said, “Messaging ahead isn’t really needed. They’re merchants; not orthodox. You can [Teleport] in and purchase what you want, long as you don’t pop into the middle of the clan. Walk in, politely. Should be fine.”

“Thank you for your help.”

Boril nodded, then returned to his yurt.

Erick and Poi walked back to the wooden boulder.

Erick could have done this entire thing as easily as covertly [Duplicate]ing someone else’s suspensions. Or, he could have Imaged for the shape of the metal, and tracked down the seller on his own, or at least their warehouse. Or he could have made the parts himself, and smoothed out whatever problems arose through judicious use of [Control Machine]. But none of that would have allowed him to get to know the people he’d be living with and defending when the dragons came around.

And so, having taken a few small steps to becoming a guest of the community, and more importantly, feeling that he had actually been successful in that endeavor, Erick had an Ophiel throw an Imaging up in the air far to the east; that plan to search for suspensions came in useful, anyway. Soon, the map populated with thousands of markers. Erick found many, many clans, but also what had to be Clan Metal Rider, with their stockpiles of finished goods.

A series of lightsteps swept Erick and Poi toward their destination, along with a fair bit of the monster cores Erick had gathered from last night’s monster cleansing. How much could the struts cost, anyway? A few dozen gold? Better to be prepared, just in case.

Clan Metal Rider had yurts made of steel and iron, and no cows at all. They even had a Teleport Square set up near the side of the encampment; it was just white pillars of stone marking out a square plot of bare ground, but other people were already using that zone to blip in and out, and that made the whole transition to the clan easy as pie. And since Erick kept Ophiel out of sight, they had no idea who Erick was, so this was great! Erick quickly found the suspension vendor at her forging yurt.

And then he discovered the price of a set of suspensions, and that was less fun.

It was a full grand core for a yurt suspension kit.

Erick balked at the price, like any person would, and then he directed the conversation to easier waters, trying to talk shop with the vendor, to find out how they moved their own vehicles around without any cows.

“Ha!” The vendor laughed. “Cows are for eating! Not for moving a yurt! You just need to get you [Control Machine], my fellow. It might take a few tendays to work it right, and the mana cost to keep it working right is rather high, but I’m sure you can manage. If my idiot nephew can make the spell, then I’m sure you can, too.”

The nephew in question, who was currently holding a hammer and banging away at some glowing red steel in the back of the barn, scowled, saying, “Hammering is better’n magery, ya old milker.”

Erick went back to the subject of the cost, “I can work on that spell, I suppose, but I’m still stuck on the cost. A whole grand core?”

The vendor didn’t laugh anymore. She stared Erick down. “That’s the price. You don’t deserve to be a grass traveler if you can’t take down a grand core monster. What you gonna do if an abyss drinker takes your cart? You gonna let that beastie keep it? No! But… I reckon you ain’t a grass traveler, are you?” The woman frowned a little, then asked, “You from Songli?”

“You’re right; I’m not a grass traveler. But I got friends in a clan and I want my own ride.”

The woman nodded. “Fair enough. Still a grand core price. The price of admission, or the price of a rite of passage. Don’t matter to Clan Metal Rider; those are the prices set by Ooloraptoor, and we abide by the Politeness of it all. But! If you can’t get the glow together right now, we’re here at this riverside all week. We’ll be here when you’re ready to pay.”

“No need.” Erick had an Ophiel blip a core directly into his open hands. It was a pale green thing the size of an orcol’s head. “Came from an abyss drinker, just last night.”

The woman startled at the display of magic but she recovered fast enough, her mouth opening in a wide, happy smile. “I suppose you earned the right, then, best as anyone else. You need transport? That costs extra, but normal prices; ten gold per 100 kilometers. We’ll get a whole system to you quick as you want.”

“No need for that. I got [Teleporting Platform].”

With a genuine grin, the woman said, “Well ain’t you fancy.”

Business proceeded rapidly from there.

Soon enough, Erick reappeared at his boulder of eternal stonewood with his axles and suspensions and braking system all piecemeal, sitting around him, just waiting to be put together.

And so, Erick put the pieces together.

The base was a rectangle seven meters across and twelve meters from front to back, with the wheels placed at meter 2 and 9. The yurt was a little larger than most since he wanted Teressa to be comfortable, but the shape was perfectly normal, if a little taller than all the others. Anyone looking at his yurt would think it a normal construction, with the walls even patterned to look like taut canvas, but the walls were actually thick eternal stonewood; thick enough to withstand most damaging spellwork. A dragon would still make quick work of it, though. The point of the structure was just to provide defense against normal [Fireball]s, and such, and this yurt could definitely do that. It even had windows and doors, though Erick took pains to make them look like normal canvas while they were shut.

The front had a nice porch, with a place for an outdoor fire. Erick would entertain guests there, if he got any, and he was pretty sure he would have some, soon enough. Perhaps even some draconic representatives, too.

He had no cows, though, and no plans to get any.

Instead, he had magic.

With his Ophiel surrounding him, and standing on the front of his new yurt, Erick harmonized the sounds of simple life in [Conjure Force Elemental], alongside [Mysticalshape]’s ability to make Reality appear in reality, and [Husbandry]’s ability to connect with an animal.

Erick had never used [Husbandry] before, but it was the standard spell to include in [Spectral Steed], and so Erick included it. [Mysticalshape] was non-standard in this sort of spellwork, but as soon as Erick heard the spells all together, he knew that Illusions would work well in this spell, and for multiple reasons. First, he could make the summon look like a real animal. But also, he felt he could conjure the summons with barding and harnesses, already attached. He could probably make the spell modular, too, and capable of working alongside multiples of the same spellwork.

He smiled, imagined a happy cow, and—

And realized that he could add in other spellwork, too. The components for [Control Machine] were [Control Item] and [Alter Friction]. Oohh yes. This was good.

He had Ophiel harmonize the tune together, and knew it to work well. [Alter Friction] could even be used to increase friction between the summoned animals and the ground, while it decreased friction on all the moving parts of the yurt’s undercarriage.

Ah. Yes. This would work out well.

A cow, or a set of cows, able to control the machine they were attached to. This would be useful in so many different scenarios! Most of those scenarios involved being incognito and driving around animal-powered vehicles, but that was fine.

Erick cast.

A splash of white light resolved into a beautiful, shaggy white cow, directly in front of the yurt. It had gleaming white horns and a white leather harness that yoked the animal between a pair of wooden beams that extended out from the yurt. The wooden beams hadn’t been there until Erick had cast the spell.

The cow lifted its head and glanced backward with its big, black eyes, and mooed upon seeing Erick; it was a happy note. Its tail swished back and forth as it —or rather, he— pawed the ground, seemingly ready to go.

Cute!

A blue box appeared.

Imaginary Work Animal, instant, close range, 1500 mana.

Summon a happy imaginary animal that gains and grants you fine control over a suitable machine of your choosing. The summon will listen to your commands and carry out simple instructions, but is not capable of much more than a normal animal of the summoned type. Multiple summons fitted toward the same goal will seamlessly join together, if possible. Lasts 1 hour under heavy workload. Lasts up to 24 hours with an easy workload.

Casting this spell again on any configuration of creatures summoned from this spell renews the duration.

Erick cast the spell again, and a second shaggy white cow joined the first. The white wooden beams that attached to both sides of the original cow became a single, large, central wooden beam, and the cows adjusted themselves to stand on both sides of that beam, their yokes automatically adjusting to the new configuration.

Erick giggled a bit, then said, “Steady walk forward, if you could.”

The cows walked forward and the yurt easily followed, as though the cows were pulling almost no weight at all. Erick steadied himself a bit as the yurt moved underneath him, but it was not that difficult to remain upright. The suspensions, and the spells controlling them, worked perfectly! As the yurt bumbled along, Erick felt as though they were on a paved road, instead of on a grassy plain.

“Pause,” Erick said.

The cows slowed down, and then stopped, swishing their tails and looking around. One stomped their foot and sniffled out, looking very much like a real cow.

Poi, who stood behind Erick, spoke up, “It’s nice. Could use some color, though.”

Erick chuckled, then said, “It is very white, isn’t it!” And it was; Erick had used the white eternal stonewood to make the whole thing, and the cows were white, too. The only color present was on the metal parts, in the undercarriage; those were grey. He said, “I’ll let everyone else color up the place. You got any decorations you want to put up? Go ahead.”

Yggdrasil’s [Scry] eye, which had been rather sedately watching Erick this whole time, seemed to perk up at Erick’s offer. He leapt off of Erick’s shoulder and went to the wooden door to the yurt, then bounced around a bit.

Erick wasn’t quite sure what he was saying, since Yggdrasil wasn’t using his words, exactly, but Erick guessed, “Put a tree on the front door? You?”

Yggdrasil’s eye bounced around happily, and waited.

Erick cast a lightward over the door. A tree took hold of the surface; a stylized version of Yggdrasil, showing off his roots and his branches and his crown of rainbow light. It was a pretty good image, in Erick’s opinion.

Yggdrasil seemed to approve, too, as he nodded and then retook his place on Erick’s shoulder.

And that was it; that was all the work Erick had for the day. Done in just a few hours of walking around.

Now, Erick and his people had a mobile home, and the way to move that home, and soon, the caravan would start moving again. People would likely come over to visit, and Erick would need to go out and get some actual furniture and such, since this was life for right now.

And that was great, actually. Just the open plains and the cows, and talking with other clans, and eventually with dragons. This was much better than pursuing the Arcology lead, or asking around for the Red dragon.

Now where was everyone else…

Erick glanced out with Ophiel.

Ah. There’s Nirzir.

The young woman was finishing up with the cooking yurt. Cleaning, it seemed. And by hand, too. Jane was also done with her duties at the cheese yurt; she exited that yurt alongside Niyazo and his daughter Iylea. There was a story there, for sure, because wasn’t Jane supposed to be with the cowherds? Yes, she was. Teressa was still at the teaching yurt, but while the kids wanted her to stay, she told them she could not; she needed to ride with her boss while they were underway. She had already been gone for too long. While she was attempting to leave, the teacher in that yurt told Teressa to come back anytime.

Erick smiled at that.

Clan Pale Cow seemed like good people. Sure, Erick had upset their life, and they were adjusting, but they were a lot more welcoming today then they had been yesterday. It just takes time, sometimes. Also, sometimes it takes the murder of every single major threat within a hundred kilometers, but that was fine, too. Most people were basically good, anyway, but stress had a habit of turning people rotten in unexpected ways. 

Ah. Now that was a nice thought. 

Erick hadn’t had a thought like that in a long time. Eh. He was probably under too much stress, himself. A nice ride across an open plain sounded really good, actually— Oh! This was a road trip! Heh. Erick smiled at that little revelation. Road trips were fun. Sometimes. 