Siege State

Tom rode into the Proving Grounds. Though the trees had been growing smaller for some time, and thinning too, the underbrush becoming sparser, and the typical wildlife less frequent, the sudden change between the Deep and the Grounds was jarring for him.

Abruptly, the trees gave way to grass. Chest height or higher, and a light, happy green, it swayed before them in endless green waves. As Darius had told them, a persistent wind announced itself as they moved into the open. Silvery light rippled and reflected from the lush stalks as the wind swept through the plains.

The group became silent as they moved into the open and away from the Deep. Tom cast a longing look over his shoulder. He felt horribly exposed.

He had become used to the Deep. Indeed, now that he had left it, he realised it felt like home. A thousand factors he had taken for granted had now been taken away.

The light, made murky and green by the dense tree cover, occasionally pierced by startlingly golden beams. The sightlines, tangled and obscured by branches and brush. The close feel of the air, and the thousand thousand scents. The myriad sounds of flora and fauna competing with each other, and the environment, in a struggle for survival.

The Deep felt old; ancient. It was a wizened grandfather: unmoving, covetous, ornery, but also be surprisingly gentle and generous to his favourites for completely inscrutable reasons.

The Proving Grounds were more unsettling to Tom than he had anticipated. The sun was punishing without an intervening canopy to mollify some of the heat. The grass, tousled about so, cast an unending susurrus. Every time the wind dropped, crickets, or some other insects, began chirping. There was no reprieve from the monotonous two-tone song of the Proving Grounds.

The grass continued unabated for as far as the eye could see. From his vantage atop Sesame, he could see for miles and miles around. In the distance, to the south-west, a single, scraggly tree broke the otherwise uninterrupted horizon. The only other relief from the unchanging panorama was the shiver and twist of the grass as it danced with the wind.

Tom’s initial impression was that the Proving Grounds felt neither old nor young. They felt… not new, but clean, perhaps, swept as they were by the constant wind. The unrelieved vista, inescapable sun, and unrelenting noise were grating, but they did not have the same ominous, foreboding feel as the Deep.

The Deep Green had the feeling of walking home late at night through a bad neighbourhood. The Proving Grounds felt like walking into a new school or church and finding everyone ignoring you. It was …apathetic. It felt indifferent. Vast, but also free in a sense.

Tom tried his best to shake off the feeling. He was in a completely new place, it was only natural it would feel different. He could not allow himself to become overwhelmed by it, or, like he had so often while first in the Deep, engrossed in thought about the environment.

There was danger here. He needed to remain alert.

The trade road now was narrow, the grass on either side encroaching upon its boundaries, sometimes springing from cracks in the hard packed earth. Though it had been beaten flat, compressed by generations of travellers, nature was unrelenting.

Tom’s head was on a swivel. With the wind providing constant background noise, he had no audible cues to direct his attention. He noticed the others suffering from the same problem: looking all around, some slowly, some jerkily, some turning full about in their saddles, each trying their best to be alert to any potential dangers.

Only Darius seemed relatively unconcerned. The man sat atop the small cliff shelf on his turtle’s back with an easy manner, one foot kicking idly. Occasionally, he would cock his head this way or that, seemingly listening for something that no one else could hear.

They were half a day’s journey into the Proving Grounds when Tom began to lose some of Sere’s bodies. Within the space of an hour, three of them were taken by predators. Only one sent an image before going dark, two fangs hinging outwards as a snake struck it.

The sparrows were not used to the terrain. Usually, they had trees to flit between in short bursts, and they could use the surrounding plants to obscure themselves somewhat while they were in flight. He would occasionally lose a sparrow to some fortunate predator, but not this many, this quickly.

Now, the sparrows had to gain height to try and see down into the grass, but this also made them vulnerable to being spotted from below. The attrition rate, if it kept up, was unacceptable. Tom could replace the bodies by spending mana, but the process took roughly an hour per body. He would not be able to keep up.

Eventually, he made a hard decision. He called back the majority of her bodies, subsuming them. They were not providing any decent scouting while summoned in this terrain, and the boosts to his reflexes, speed and agility while they were subbed would make a big difference in a sudden ambush.

Tom left three sparrows sitting on various mounts throughout the party, to provide him with just a little coverage. He also left Sus and Sol summoned. The two owls could stay airborne for much longer, and were not as vulnerable to being picked off because of it. Their eyesight was also much better than Sere’s in this terrain, too.

The change proved to be prescient.

The group stopped at midday for lunch, dismounting and retrieving food and drink from various spatial storages and allowing their familiars to rest. They ate right in the middle of the trade road, variously sitting on the ground, or on boxes or chairs similarly taken from storage.

Tom was eating some bread and cheese and talking quietly with Rosa, when he caught a flash of alarm from Sesame, Sus and Sol.

He flinched, instinctively dropping backwards off the small folding chair he’d been sitting on. A wickedly barbed tail speared out of the tall grass and punctured into the meat of his shoulder.

Tom had a second’s clarity where time seemed to slow. He could see the raised lump along his shoulder and chest where the barb lay below the skin. He saw Rosa’s eyes widening in shock. He felt more than saw the rest of the group responding to the disturbance. He followed the barb to the chitinous, segmented tail it was attached to, all the way to where it disappeared in the grass.

Then the barb ripped free of his body with nauseating, sucking, pop. The tail vanished back into the grass. Pain radiated through Tom’s chest and arm, followed by an odd, chilling sensation.

His wisp flashed a moment later, and he suddenly went boneless. His limbs responded to his commands spasmodically, here obeying him, there ignoring him, then swapping. Sweet Suffering had activated, and whatever ‘buff’ it had given him was playing havoc with him.

Tom drew his wisp over as Rosa stood and whirled, flames igniting around her arms. The rest of the group scrambled into readiness. Before they could even stand to face the threat, the tail lanced out of the grass again -this time towards Rosa.

It was fast, outrageously so. The only reason Tom had been able to avoid a lethal blow was due to his enhanced reflexes and speed from subbing most of Sere’s bodies. Even then, the wound he’d taken was serious.

Rosa had the Ideal of Speed, but the effects were only incremental. Quick Escape increased her speed for every nearby enemy, but unlike fighting orcs, there was likely only the one here. Her pinnacle skill was a control skill that allowed her to manipulate speed by tiny amounts. Neither, even combined, were enough. She began to raise her hands, to turn, but the tail speared towards her unerringly.

Suddenly there was a loud crack, and a shield flared into existence in front of Rosa, just higher than she was tall, and wide enough for three men. The tail snapped against it, throwing cracks all across its surface.

The surface of the shield hissed, making a bizarre metallic sound, like a wire fence strung with beads rattling. The shield gave off a pulse of white behind it, and Tom felt the pain in his shoulder and chest lessen slightly.

Darius stood next to his familiar, one hand thrown out towards them. Granny, the craggy tortoise, had turned about to face the threat, her stubby legs sunk slightly into the road. A shiver passed through the air around her shell, making it seem to vibrate.

All of this passed in a moment. Tom’s wisp arrived in front of his face. He reached into his inventory space, and pulled free one of many small, purple squares directly into his mouth.

The object looked like a colourful square of taffy, but when it hit his palate, it began to dissolve quickly and immediately. The overwhelming taste of plums filled his mouth. Within moments, Tom’s limbs began to respond properly. The pain in his shoulder and chest lessened even further. He rolled onto his front, and brought himself to his feet. By the time he stood, he was steady.

He sent a quick prayer to Goddess that he had caught up with Harvey Bubbles, the alchemist, before he left Wayrest. He had ended up spending most of a day with him.

Ever since Tom had met him the first time, it had become increasingly obvious that Sweet Suffering was one of his strongest skills, probably even the strongest. But it had several downsides.

For one, it was unreliable in what effects it could produce. Sometimes, what the system decided was a buff or debuff or a poison could be extremely arbitrary. Sometimes, it would not activate, even when he took something most would consider a poison. Other times, like now, it did activate, but the ‘buff’ it gave was detrimental.

Tom had been taking extensive notes about the skill, and how it interacted with the various situations he had found himself in in the Deep, and the potions and poisons Bubbles had given him. The strange, excitable little man had been absolutely exuberant. And together, they had worked out some new tricks.

He had made the mistake of thinking of Sweet Suffering as a catch-all. It was not. If he relied on it too heavily, it could pull the rug out from under him at a critical time. Luckily, Harvey had an idea.

Harvey had created a batch of candy-like creations, designed to clear both any active buffs and debuffs when consumed. They were designed to activate almost instantaneously.

They were Goddess-sent. The candies allowed for him to reset Sweet Suffering at will, and also contained a small damage over time effect as well. The skill would pick it up and turn it into healing now, too. A small, but welcome, side effect.

Tom debated dipping into the rest of his stock to activate more buffs, but in short order, the fight was over. Eli drew a greatsword from a sheath on his back and swept it forwards. All the grass in a wide arc toppled and fell. Better, a high, warbling shriek sounded as well.

The falling grass revealed a huge scorpion. Its chitinous shell was scored where it had been hit by the same Blade skill of Eli’s that had reaped the grass. It realised it had lost the element of surprise, and was now outnumbered and revealed, and was struggling to escape.

It could not. Granny had manipulated the earth below it to trap its legs. Every time it pulled one free, the tortoise snared another. Rosa struck the trapped creature in the head with a lance of fire. Darius pounced forward, and his sword struck the chitin where she had blackened it. The length of steel slid smoothly through the weakened carapace. The monster shrieked and died.

The scorpion was enormous. It was far bigger than any insect Tom had seen, and he had seen some massive ones in the Deep. Its tail was so long that it looked ungainly, impractical, if one had not seen it in action. Large, sharp claws sat on the end of two stubby little arms. Its insectile eyes had been ruined by Rosa’s fire.

The group sat around, relieved, once it was clear that the scorpion was the only attacker. They needed a moment to collect themselves. Darius allowed them it, but then pressured them to move on. They needed to move on before any monsters drawn by the sounds of fighting could set their own ambushes. There would be enough of those on their journey without tempting fate.