A Soldier's Life - 179 - Last Day in Caelora

Chapter 179: Last Day in Caelora

In the light of the glowstone, it took us a few minutes to identify that one set of tracks looked to be slightly larger. “Backtracking on a trail is much harder than following already laid footfalls,” Maveith intoned softly. He pointed toward the likely path that we moved to follow.

A hundred feet further down the tunnel, the first turn showed signs that someone had been waiting in ambush around a corner. The dust had been stirred up, and drying urine was clearly on the wall, an indication we were going in the correct direction. A specter interrupted our inspection of the intersection. Maveith’s hammer made quick work of it, and we moved out before it could convalesce.

We followed the trail, cutting down a few more specters, which started appearing more frequently. The roots of the hearth tree blocked a few passages, and it looked like the company was circling around the root system in the opposite direction from where we had arrived. That didn’t make much sense unless they were planning to leave the city by a different route.

I recalled the city map in my head, and the heart tree was in the city’s northern district, close to the northern wall. My best guess was that they were planning to exit the city as far away from the library as possible in case the summoner looked there first. 

After killing a fifth specter in just a few minutes, I paused in the corridor. “Maveith, do you think we should try to find our way to the library or follow the company’s path?”

Maveith considered my question. “Why? Do you not wish to reunite with everyone?”

“It is not that. They are headed for parts of the city with a high concentration of specters. We could get swarmed, and I am guessing Castile may have stopped using the kettle on dissipated specters to dissuade from being followed by the summoner since they do not know he is dead. We spent weeks thinning the specters in and around the library. It may be safer for us for us to go the other way.”

Maveith seemed to consider, looking both ways down the corridor. “If you think the library exit is safer, then we should go that way.” Maveith’s hand tightened on his hammer.

I turned around and started backtracking until we found the first split in a corridor. We encountered the first familiar specter as well. A teenage elf dressed in a ball gown, it was hard to forget her appearance the first time I stabbed her. I cut her down, and we started following the other prints. It was not long before we reached the room beneath the adventurer’s tavern we had sheltered in. To fool the elven mage, Konstantin must have made the false tracks to this point.

We proceeded to follow the clear path all the way back to the wine cellar. Only six wandering specters encountered us on the long trek through the winding passages, already less than the short path we had followed for Castile and the company. We entered the wine cellar; and apparently no one had disturbed it, and no specters were present.

“I could use a rest Maveith. I think we are safe.” I sat down on one of the bunks we had hauled into the room. I really was exhausted and famished from using so many healing potions. I assumed it would be a fight for us to make it from the library to the city’s gates. I was tempted to try and retrieve something from dimensional space, but my aether channels were still warning me not to. Just a small item shouldn’t hurt, right? I pulled the dreamscape amulet to my hand and winced at the pain. How long was this burning going to last? Maybe Castile’s books in the dreamscape had an answer.

Maveith eyed the amulet in understanding, “I will stand watch for specters, Eryk. You can rest.” He began walking up and down the racks of bottles while I made myself comfortable. Just a painful trickle of aether, and I was in the dreamscape.

The dreamscape creations greeted me. Lucien, the horse master, was among the group, and I felt a heavy weight on seeing him alive and smiling. I talked to him about horses while Oscar circled me excitedly with a ball.

Raelia’s clone demanded to know when she was going to be freed from the prison. Konstantin, Xavier, and Adrian pestered me to spar today, and I turned them down as I moved to the shelves of books. Scholar Favian interrupted me, “You know, Eryk, if you are passing through the library, I wouldn’t mind getting some more reading material.”

I paused to look at the scholar. I had added all three hundred books the Caelorian elves had on herbalism and apothecary to the dreamscape. I recalled the other professions in the library: cooking and brewing, weaving, woodcraft, and a floor of books on metal smithing everything from household goods to weapons and armor. “I will see what I can do, Scholar Favian,” I said, and the manifestation drawn from my subconsciousness smiled brightly.

I focused on learning what I could about aether burn from the books Castile had manifested. The news was not good. If you proceeded to use aether even though your body was protesting with a sensation of burning, then you were destroying your ability to channel aether. It was described as feeding the fire. So I had, in fact, reduced my capacity to channel already.

After a storm of curses, which had everyone back fearfully away from me, I calmed down. Reading further in the text, I learned there was a way to heal your aether channels by consuming apex channeling essences to restore your potential. The text noted restoring each potential point would take around a dozen apex channeling essences. I was guessing it would be a lot less for me, and maybe I could skate by with just major essences. I currently had no channeling essences in my dimensional space, and the only two I have received in my time had been from the manticores.

I reread the Burnt Mage chapter a few times before placing the book back on the shelf. The amount of pain a burnt mage felt depended on how many points of potential they had lost. Based on the pain I was feeling, I was worried I had lost quite a few points. There was nothing I could do about it now, and there was nothing I would change about the fight—other than running immediately. Since my slow aging spell form constantly drew aether, I was going to be in constant pain if I used it until I consumed an aether channeling essence.

I played with Oscar and practiced with my new spear for a while before exiting the dreamscape. Maveith had pulled dozens of bottles of elven wine and placed them on another bunk. “Any specters?” I asked, standing.

“None,” he grumbled tiredly.

I nodded as that was good news. It meant the specters had not been able to track us. “Rest for a while, Maveith, and then we will visit the towers in the library before escaping the city.”

“Why?” He asked, confusion in his tone.

“I want to gather some of the books to take with us.”

Maveith looked at the wine he was selecting, “I was hoping you could take some of these if you had space. I am partial to the deep red ones in the green bottles.”

I revealed my issues to my friend. “I will see what I can do. I burnt my aether channels fighting the summoner.”

In a very sagely, serious tone, Maveith explained, “Your body tells you when you need to stop using aether. Everyone knows that.” I frowned but did not respond. Castile had told me as much, but my aether tolerance had greatly outstripped my aether pool, and she was not concerned about me reaching that point. I had been forced to drink the aether restorative over and over again in such a short period. Maveith eventually lay down with the dreamscape amulet, and I sat on watch.

Hours later, Maveith rose with a yawn and a burst of morning flatulence. I moved a distance away from the deadly cloud and figured it had been long enough to access my dimensional space. I pulled out the Elven tablet reader table, but my channels were still burning, but at least it had not gotten any worse. With a deep breath, I activated the table through the pain. I was stunned at the reading.

My aether channeling was 27/57—dropping from 28/58. I had only lost a single point of potential. Why was the pain so intense to channel? Was I just a wimp? How bad would it be if I lost two points or three points? I suddenly had a lot more sympathy for the old healer back in Sobral.

Maveith was keeping his distance to respect the privacy of my readings, and I reset the reader. “Do you want to use it?” I asked the goliath, but he shook his head negatively. I pulled out the thermal stone and a large amount of food for a feast and let Maveith do the preparation honors.

Potatoes, bacon, and some liver for Maveith. Even with the ring of sustenance, my current appetite took a lot of food to fill the void at this meal. Once I started eating, I managed to keep up with Maveith, and he was more than a little surprised as we mock-raced to eat the most.

I moved all 48 bottles of the dark red elven wine to my space in one go to join the nine bottles I had remaining. The aether burn was the same whether I was moving a large or small item. Maveith shook his head either in sympathy or maybe disappointment as I winced with the effort. It was a different type of pain than physical. I reactivated my slow aging. If I had to describe the pain, it was like my veins were pumping fire instead of blood. Over time, I would just have to get accustomed to it.

Before sending my pack to storage, I studied the runes on both of the summoner’s rings, turning the thermal stone slowly. I would figure out what they did in the dreamscape sometime in the future. I attached the black blade to my hip and decided to send the magebane blade to my storage with the pack. My head exploded in a flash of light, and then nothing.

I woke on the floor with a very concerned Maveith kneeling over me. His voice was panicked. “Eryk, wake up!” He was shaking me hard, my armor rattling on the floor from his efforts.

“I’m awake!” I protested the rough treatment. “What happened?” I was already puzzling it out for myself.

Maveith exhaled in relief, “Your backpack shot across the room. Slamming into the wall, and you collapsed to the floor minutes ago!”

My head hurt, and aether channels were flaring with each beat of my heart. I recalled what happened. I opened my dimensional space and selected an open spot for the pack. I pressed the pack into the space, tried to close it, and then…boom.

Something in the pack could not be stored in a dimensional space. I quickly scanned my storage and was relieved everything was still there. Raelia seemed unharmed, but I wouldn’t know for sure until I released her. I rubbed my headache away, activating my slow aging again. I picked up the pack, making sure the collector was unharmed. “Something in the summoner’s possessions resisted being sent to my dimensional space. I think I am fine. It was just extreme backlash, like when I failed to put the summoner’s head in my space. But about ten times worse.”

I was unsteady on my feet as I searched the pack. I had my suspicions. It was either the summoner’s robe or the belt. Or it could be the rings or the amulet. My splitting head was some modicum of revenge from the dead mage. I pulled out the robe and the belt from the pack but was too reluctant to try again. I replaced them and just shouldered the pack but sent the magebane blade and the essence collector to storage. “Let’s go to the tower.”

We only encountered two specters on our walk, and one did not even attack us. It was just an elf boy wandering the under city with a toy soldier in his hand. We climbed the tower, and the room still had the lingering unwashed smell of the company even after weeks away. The sun was up outside, and Maveith looked at me for direction. “Bring me the books on metalsmithing. We will take as many as I can in my storage to sell. In the meantime, I am going to page through as many of these other books as I can to add to the dreamscape.”

Maveith didn’t question the delay in leaving the city and got to work. It was about midday by the sun outside the window. I decided I would work till sunrise tomorrow, and then we would leave.

My Elvish had improved slightly, so it is easier to translate the titles. Scholar Favian hadn’t shuffled the books too much on the shelves. I first started with the cooking and brewing books, leaning toward the latter. Since I was just paging through them, I was not consuming the knowledge but enjoyed the faded artistic illustrations briefly as I worked. I was just preparing to add it later to the dreamscape. After sunset, I worked under the glowstone while the stack of metalsmithing books Maveith had brought from the other floor started to get extremely large. I thought I would not be able to take them all.

Maveith finished his task, claiming all the viable books on metalsmithing, and I started working on paging through the books on woodcraft next. My eyes burned as I turned the pages for hour upon hour. Maveith was snoring softly when the gray dawn crept into the window. I had just about completed the collection of woodcraft books, so I let Maveith sleep until I finished the last book. Then, I stood, cracking my back.

I was surprised I was able to get all 500 books Maveith had brought down from the other library, but I had to expel some apples and potatoes. My extra-dimensional cube was getting extremely crowded, though. I would page through them eventually to add them to the dreamscape in the future. But more importantly, they should sell extremely well. Maybe one day, I would return and claim the rest of the collection. But I assumed once Castile reported; the Empire would clear the city of specters and take the intact tomes.

“Maveith?” I voiced loudly to wake my friend. He woke quickly and stood on alert. “It is time to go.” Maveith scanned the room, saw the books gone, and nodded. It was mid-morning, and it was our last day in the undead elven city of Caelora.