§070 Vacation I

"When you said, 'Let's go fishing in the ocean,' we didn't know you meant in the ocean!" Tanya hugged the much smaller Jalil to keep him from freezing. Winter started early this far south, and Tanya liked any excuse to hold the hare like he was a stuffed toy.

"There's fish out there!" Taylor swept his arm at the sea, its far horizon lined with a promise that dawn would come. Eventually. "You're a bear. You love fish!" 

"I'm a bear spirit. There's a difference!"

"Premi doesn't mind, do you, Premi?"

"She's a water bird!"

Premi let the most recent wave wash and foam over her webbed feet. "You might as well give up. They're not interested. They're never going to be interested. Nobody here is as fanatical about fishing as we are. Not even Tanya."

"But you'll come, right?"

"Naturally. But if you want to fill up my inventory with fish I'm not allowed to eat, the party gets half the proceeds for transportation."

"Yes! Saria? Can I interest you in a morning swim?"

Saria didn't look cold, despite not having fur, but she eyed the surf like it was the enemy. Salt and seaweed filled their noses. "I'm freshwater. That's the sea."

"Fine. You three can go back to bed or do whatever you like to do. Premi and I will be back by noon."

Normally, the Army of Lightness loved Taylor's surprise field trips, but it seemed he was in the minority this time. The three spirits turned their grateful backs on him and trudged uphill to where a line of small houses marked the edge of Dayris Banks, a village at the far south of Temer Province. It sat on a rare spit of land that people could build on. Temer's coast and a hundred miles inland were almost entirely bracken marsh. Beyond the marsh, Temer was mostly desert.

Temer was not a popular province to live in.

The fishing, however, was legendary. Boats came from Wenfold, Dimmik, Rossignol, and the Blessed Lands to ply the southern waters in winter. After a season of running all over the Empire fighting monsters and eliminating threats to the Twilight Realm, Taylor deserved this. He had purchased and enchanted special clothes to keep from freezing, crafted a fishing pole suited to his task, and acquired more magic bags. They couldn't hold a candle to his old one individually, but they would let him transport several impressive specimens.

Premi flew, while Taylor Airwalked behind her. They had scouted the area the day before, and there was a convenient rock sticking above sea level when the tide was low. It was the top of an underwater spire. There were many in that area, severe navigation hazards for any boat that plied those waters. His chosen rock was one of the few that broke the surface.

Taylor floated when the waves came in, and tread the cloudy water using only his feet. When the waves went out, he landed on the rock. He spent his first hour learning how to keep his place. Somehow, while all that was happening, he cast his line and fished. 

Premi fared far better than he did. She flew expansive circles around the area and plummeted to the surface whenever she spied fish close to the surface. In the time it took him to make his first catch, she must have caught forty pounds and swallowed most of it. She was nice enough to share a few smaller fish for his bait box.

Taylor's first bite came as the sun peeked over the horizon. He bobbed in the water, letting frigid swells wash over him, and got a solid pull on his line. With his rod and enhancement magic, he hauled in a twenty-pounder with scales the color of sapphires. He took one after the other that way and put them in a magic bag he kept on a floating platform anchored to his rock.

Warming water shifted the currents, and the sea cleared. The cleaner water traded intense plankton taste for mineral flavors. Frigid ocean spray turned to merely bracing. Premi paddled nearby, riding high in the water where he was only a head and shoulders. "They've gone low," she said. 

Between waves, Taylor rigged his line for the middle depths, with a bigger, heavier hook baited with a generous five-pounder. If the blues had abandoned the bright surface to run the pillars, maybe the bigger fish that hunted them would be there, too. 

He was lucky to get his next bite while his feet were on his rock. He jerked hard on his line, reeled for a while, and had a brief glimpse of something long and silvery before the next swell picked him up. Waves hid his line from view. For a second, he thought he could pull it off, treading water while his hands were busy reeling in fifty pounds of fish. But it wasn't meant to be.

A half-ton of vermillion and gold sprang from the water, with his fish clamped in its jaws. Premi called out "cori-cori!".

Cori-cori was a very coveted fish. Taylor's first thought was, Hey! No poaching! He didn't have time for a second thought. He was underwater, dragged along by the cori-cori. 

Unlike some of his other lives, in this life, he made a habit of preparing for predictable dangers. Case in point: when fishing in deep water without a boat or flotation device, have a water-breathing spell ready. A pocket of breathable air formed around his face as the cori-cori pulled him along. At first, it tried to escape by swimming out to sea, but Taylor refused to let go of his line. When that didn't work, it tried to go deep. Taylor was pulled into the undulating silence of the sea.

Lacking anything to brace against, Taylor didn't try to fight the fish. Instead, he reeled himself toward his prey as fast as he could. As long as the cori didn't let him go, then he could catch the fish. He surrounded himself with a low-density barrier, so he would act like a float. He felt like he was being dragged through freezing wet cement by wild horses

It seemed like a great idea at the time, but cori-cori were strong, and even Taylor's body enhancements weren't prepared for a depth of two hundred feet. His ears screamed at him. It was hard to breathe against the rapidly increasing pressure. His bubble of buoyancy kept shrinking, and he kept forcing more magic into the effect to keep it from collapsing on him. Taylor considered letting go.

Ultimately, he was saved from having to make that decision, but only because something far bigger than the two of them moved in the depths below. He couldn't see it except as a moving blotch of darker seawater below him, but he felt it, as big as a thousand cori-coris, gliding through the cold stream of water, pushing smaller fish (and people) away in its wake. The cori-cori turned upward with the hook still in its mouth and fled, while Taylor hung on for all he was worth, reeling whenever he got the chance. Once he was close enough, he surrounded the fish with the same buoyant force he used on himself, and they shot to the surface together. The cori-cori flip-flapped in a panic, slapping Taylor with a hundred-pound tail smack so hard he took bruises through his enhancements.

Repeatedly.

Whack-smack!

Cla-pap!

They breached the surface a hundred yards from Premi, who was floating in serene post-feast contentment. 

The cori hit him again. 

Mack-jack!

It nearly got away, but Taylor floated them both with gravity magic. He drew his belt knife, pulled the fish closer by grabbing onto the line, and tried to stab it while in mid-air. The cori-cori dodged and sank its row of needle teeth into his forearm.

Snack!

The fish tried to slap him again, but with nothing to use as leverage, it wasn't so effective. It flopped its body, swinging Taylor back and forth by the arm.

Taylor dropped his fishing rod so he could grab the knife with his free hand and stabbed the enemy fish between the eyes, vanquishing it once and for all.

He carefully hauled the fish to shore while starting a low level of regeneration. The aches in every joint and tingling in his limbs spelled decompression sickness. When he finally made it to the beach, he collapsed with his prize next to him. He didn't care if the tide washed them back out again. Sunlight started sinking into his freezing limbs.

"What are you doing?" Premi stood over him, her long pelican bill snapping out words. "That is no way to treat bloodguard cori-cori! Do you know how valuable that is?!"

"Gods, I hope so. It nearly fed me to something bigger."

"You're in no state. Move over." A knife appeared among the bird's primary feathers. "And watch closely."

"Moving!" He grunted with the effort, but moved out of the way of Premi's knife just in time. With only minor help from Taylor, she bled and gutted the creature in three minutes. They packed it in frozen seawater and plenty of preservation magic, and then stashed it in a magic bag. It barely fit.

"We have to get this to Avimore. What those Imperials pay for bloodguard will make you weep!"

"I'm not going to the Imperial capital for one transaction. I'd like to stay beneath Imperial notice."

Premi gave him a look.

"The paladin thing was months ago! They might forget."

Premi did not look convinced, but played along anyway. "Celosia, then. Lovely cuisine. Big foodie city. There's enough time before your apprentice thing. Didn't you say you have a sister there?"

"We can leave tomorrow. Today, I'm wrecked!"

Taylor trudged uphill to their rented house. Premi walked her funny, stiff-legged walk next to him. As they got away from the noise of the surf, they could hear Jalil singing and playing a bowed, three-stringed instrument called a pontus. He was pretty good, but if he was playing, then half the neighborhood would be in their house. The hare was such a dapper, serious fellow in the field. But put a drink in his hand and a song on his lips, and he became irresistible to humanoids.

Taylor could banish his spirit companions whenever he wanted, but he was having too much fun with them around. Instead, he checked that his mask was on and got ready to meet the locals.

-----

Taylor was still bleary-eyed the next morning. Somehow, he ended up behind a translucent screen where he could watch the festivities without being seen by the people who crowded their rented house. Jalil taught the locals made-up songs with titles like, Dance For Our Dark Companion, and Anger Not Our Lord, But Appease Him With Treats. Only the best dancers and singers were permitted to come behind the screen, kneel, and offer Taylor little plates of food or cups of beverage. 

He should have stopped it. He really should have. But it was too silly to take seriously enough to deny them their fun. He accepted each offering as if he were being careful not to harm the fragile mortals by accident, and gave each supplicant the tiniest jolt of divine mana. After several rounds of such offerings, the party turned into something more ecstatic. The music never stopped, and Taylor imagined the Old Folks were among them, joining in a revelry where every person did their own dance as they all danced together. 

Moya was making drinks when she wasn't dancing with Omoyon. Wiñuri played percussion, and Gelexia danced sinuously with a local catkin woman. Chichica and Erstdwerg waved to him. Nelistli brokered an argument between a half-elven man and his wife, who had come looking for him.

At the time, Taylor wrote it off as an enjoyable, fanciful moment.

On his way out of town, he looked toward the sea one last time. The beach rose to a dune, and then a line of wind-twisted trees took over, anchoring the land against high tides. Some of those trees were ancient. One especially large specimen had been hit by lightning years ago. There was talk about taking it down before it became a fire hazard.

That was no longer an option. Now, it was a twenty-foot-tall divine figure of Ashnut, god of sky and storms. The limbs had become arms. The split trunk was the god's mighty legs, braced for some heroic act. His wind-twisted hair streamed behind him while he shouted at the sky, maybe in joy, maybe in defiance against the other gods. 

Someone must have given Taylor alcohol last night, because he barely remembered making the thing. He recalled there was an impromptu parade out to the old tree, and there might have been some primal screaming. He wasn't sure. But he definitely remembered shaping it all at once and dumping a gargantuan amount of mana into it.

Taylor clapped his hands together and acknowledged the god from a distance, then turned his back on the seaside town. If he left quickly enough, they might forget it was him who threw a wild party and sanctified an old tree. He tried hard to remember if he had ever been introduced by name. Probably not. Saria had handled the house rental because she wanted to practice with her improved elf form.

"So," said Tanya, too casually, "when are you going to take us through your magic tree thingy?"

"Not today," Taylor grunted through his headache. "I don't know if it's safe for spirits." That was true, but only part of the reason. He wasn't ready to share the Other Place yet. Some of it was weird, and he didn't know what they would think about it. Mountains floated upside down, a river ran in circles,  paths of flowers climbed into the sky to halt in blooming verandas. He had a crystal garden and bottomless bogs that would suck a person down and drop them into underground caverns full of luminescent fungi. The Other Place molded itself to his will, and he tended to do things without a reason. It was embarrassing that he hadn't thought of anything better, hadn't made a plan, and he didn't want to be judged.

When they reached the latest grove, his companions loaded him up with three magic bags in addition to his own. Spirits couldn't take anything from Aarden back to Twilight via summoning. Taylor had to periodically ferry goods through the gates so they could keep their material gains, which complicated any plans to travel across and between three co-terminous worlds. For now, it was simplest for him to haul all of the party's bags to Celosia. Some of them would fit inside the others, so he only had to carry two of them.

After the exchange, Taylor dismissed his party and entered his grove. A few minutes later, he emerged in the Blessed Lands Province, north of the Hunaphu Mountains and an hour's Airwalk from a town with a train stop. Protected by a mask and Riverstone, he bought a first-class ticket in a sleeper car and was in Celosia before nightfall. It was the quietest day he'd experienced in weeks.

Celosia was a city that sprawled, and the carriage Taylor hired gave him a good tour. Whereas Bostkirk was ruthlessly planned, built, and rebuilt to fit within its walls, Celosia spread along the eastern shore of Lake Nivermere and both sides of the Shelmont River, expanding where and when it wanted to. Boxy brick buildings were painted in earthy oranges, reds, and yellows, with arched windows plated in glass. An occasional church or civic building stuck out for its steep rooflines, towers, and tall windows.

People called it the City of a Hundred Bridges. Taylor doubted there were that many, but there were certainly a lot of them. When the carriage crossed the Shelmont, he spied six bridges from three architectural epochs, and more in the distance.

The Dwergbank in Celosia was just like the one in Bostkirk: solid stone strong enough to support untold generations of dwarves without a hint of yielding to their extraordinary weight. This was the moment of truth: was he a pariah everywhere, or was the damage limited to Bostkirk? Checking in at the bank would alert any authorities who were looking for him. He would feel better if he didn't have to go in alone, but the bank had rules against spirit companions in the bank. Not even animal familiars were allowed inside.

The marble lobby echoed patrons' footsteps, and quills glided against bank-quality paper in hushed strokes. He wondered if Dwergbank lobbies were always like this: solid, cool, and quiet. He bypassed the common line and stepped in front of a teller for ranked accounts.

"I'd like to change my mail instructions, and I need a hotel recommendation." It was a common enough set of instructions for someone who had been traveling. Taylor placed his mithril alloy card on the identity plate. "Somewhere on par with the Black Peony in Bostkirk would be ideal. I'd also like an appraiser appointment tomorrow, if possible."

The teller's hands waved in mid-air as she read from her tablet. "Director Theudebald would like to meet with you. Would tomorrow afternoon be a good time for you?"

"What's this about?"

"It only says 'urgent business' here." Her brow furrowed in polite concern. "You don't know what it might be?"

Taylor thought about the mess with the church and that paladin, his research partners who couldn't reach him, a trail of closed vents across the southern provinces, and wagonloads of undeclared mana crystal.

"Nothing comes to mind."

"I'll make that recommendation, sir, and set up the other appointments. The director is very busy, so perhaps … "

"It's fine if he proposes the time. I'll keep tomorrow afternoon clear for him until the second post. After that, no promises."

The teller smiled politely. "Understood, sir."

-----

Before entering the hotel, Taylor ducked into a side street and summoned Saria. She was the only one with a passable alternate form, so she could accompany him almost anywhere. The swishing, swirly invocation hurt his pride a little, but the damage was minimal: fewer than a hundred people saw it, and they lost interest when they realized it was a summoning. Summoners were weird. Apparently, most other people knew this.

"You still look tired." Saria smoothed his hair, and he didn't hate it. "And a little wild, too. You need a haircut, mister. Send me back and get some rest."

"Won't everybody be disappointed?"

"I'll explain it to them. Call us tomorrow for lunch. Jalil won't stop talking about the food. He might explode if you make him wait for dinner." Soon she was gone, and Taylor entered the hotel alone.

The Malachite lacked Black Peony's idiosyncrasy, but the dwarven door guards and glowing wards were reassuring. Stepping into the lobby felt like passing through a fortress's gates and leaving behind the uncertain dangers of the wild outdoors.

Within the hour, he was bathed, changed, and face down on a comfortable bed.