Published at 24th of February 2024 10:33 am

Chapter Book 2, Chapter 1

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There were fourteen stone pillars growing out of the ground, all arranged in a circle and each inscribed with thousands of interconnected runes. Each one was five feet tall and six inches thick. It had taken me the better part of three days to set them up in the mountain cave I’d claimed as my temporary home. I’d spent another day after that carving grooves into the ground between the poles until my full ritual circle was complete.

That had been the easy part.

With all the prep work completed, I’d sought out the raw material I’d need, and material of any kind was scarce in this wasteland I’d found myself trapped in. If I’d had access to my vaults back in the Night Vale, I’d be using a limb from a maglosa tree that I’d seeded mana crystals into as it grew, then harvested and soaked in an alchemical bath of pure liquid mana combined with various herbs infused with the specific properties I was after.

I was not in the Night Vale, however. I was in a cave overlooking an endless expanse of dead, cracked earth with no signs of life. My resources were significantly more limited than I would have liked, but I was doing the best I could with what I had. The ritual circle I’d prepared was crude by my standards, but I had to start somewhere. It would suffice as the crucible I forged my first generation of equipment in.

I surveyed the results of my work with a sigh. I was procrastinating, and had been for the last two hours. I knew the circle was perfect. I knew the rune pillars were flawless. The only thing I was lacking was the raw materials to put through my new creation.

The unfortunate truth of life in the wastes was that I wasn’t going to find what I needed just wandering around looking for it. I was going to need to trade for it, and that meant approaching a place I’d been thoroughly avoiding. My initial visit had been more than enough.

Blighter’s Hole was a trading post for monster hunters operating on the east side of what was known as the Basin. The population fluctuated day to day as various groups filtered in and out with their latest trophies. Usually, that meant hides and maybe some teeth, claws, or bones. But occasionally, they’d scavenge something valuable out of the wastes itself, and that included wood. That was what I was after.

So, as much as I disliked the idea of visiting Blighter’s Hole again, I left my cave and made my way down the mountain side. I used a simple weight reduction spell to allow me to jump down and drift toward ground level. It was a cheap and easy way for me to get to the ground, but going back up was going to be more of a challenge when I returned.

Blighter’s Hole was about five miles away from where I landed, but I needed to walk closer to seven to reach it. Much like my own hideout, it was located up in the mountains. In this case, it was a flat and mostly level stretch of land about a thousand feet wide and nestled between two peaks. It was only accessible by a single trail that wound its way up the side of the mountain, which made it easily defensible against monsters and bandits alike.

There were monsters lurking in the wastes, creatures with senses designed to find and track mana, who subsisted partially or wholly on it. For most monsters, the most readily available source of mana was other living creatures. Since I could shield my own mana core from being detected, that meant I had a peaceful, if boring, walk ahead of me. Unless I literally stumbled into some monster’s den, I was unlikely to encounter any problems.

While I could be reasonably assured that I’d pass unnoticed by monsters who hunted for mana, there were plenty of other animals living in the wastes. Some of them even had magic of their own, though the weak ones didn’t last long before becoming a meal. I should have been on the look out for some of the more mundane dangers of the wastes.

It wasn’t until my shield ward flared to life to deflect an attack that I realized there was a scorpion crawling onto my foot. It was a black thing, eight inches long not including the stinger, far too big for my tastes. Said stinger was flailing about, having been shoved back by the mana in my ward, and the scorpion danced back in agitation as it prepared to strike again.

A force bolt surged out of my finger to strike the scorpion on the head, splitting open its black shell and it causing it to collapse to the ground. I nudged it with my foot to be certain it was really dead, then scooped it up to examine it more closely.

I hadn’t been living all that long in the wastes. It was somewhere around my fourth birthday, and the village of my birth about fifty miles to the east had been relatively pest-free. But I did have two thousand years of knowledge from my previous life to draw on, and I knew what the valuable parts of the average scorpion were. First and foremost was the venom. After that was the chitin, though that was rarely worth much.

Well, I was heading to a trading post. Either it was worth something or it wasn’t, but it wasn’t going to cost me anything to take the body with me. Shrugging, I stuffed it into my satchel right next to the jackal teeth I’d liberated from the mouth of a lone wanderer that had somehow found its way to my camp and the horns of some sort of aggressive mountain goat that had taken offense to me walking a mountain trail a week ago.

Goat meat wasn’t terrible, but I’d tasted better. It was filling, and that was about the best thing I could say for it. Maybe the right spices to season it would have made a difference. Either way, I’d grown heartily sick of it after only three days and thrown the rest out. It wasn’t worth the mana I’d expended keeping it fresh.

I noticed another scorpion perched on a rock off to my right and adjusted my course to circle wide from it. It wasn’t that I was in any actual danger, but there was no need to deplete my shield ward on something completely avoidable. Maybe if it turned out they were worth anything, I’d come back and hunt it down, but I doubted it.

With a glance up at the hot desert sun to judge how long I’d been walking, I trudged on.

***

“Well, well, if it’s not the little brat,” a fat, greasy man said. He wore some sort of leather vest that couldn’t have stretched across his bulk to save his life, and had a dark, thick mat of chest hair curling out between the material.

How anyone got to be that large living here was a mystery to me, but the proof was right before my eyes. I hid my grimace and said, “I need some supplies.”

“Sure you do,” the fat man said with a laugh. “Little kid like you, it must be hard out there hunting monsters all on your own. But I’m not running a charity.”

Blighter’s Hole only had three permanent spots. One was the tavern, though I shuddered to think how they made their booze all the way out here. I was far from an expert brewer, but even I knew it wasn’t possible to make alcohol with just water and dirt. Since there wasn’t much of anything else around Blighter’s Hole, I assumed the secret ingredient probably wasn’t something I wanted to know.

The second spot was what gave the camp its name. Somehow, a twenty-foot-wide hole had been bored through the stone. If anyone knew what was at the bottom, I hadn’t heard the answer during my first and only visit to this place. I’d taken a minute to look over the edge, but there was nothing but darkness at the bottom. To my understanding, all manner of things had been tossed in over the years, everything from garbage to dead bodies, and the hole had never filled. I had no doubt copious amounts of recycled moonshine had made their way from the bladders of thousands of hunters into the hole as well.

The third fixture of Blighter’s Hole was the trading post, run by the man in front of me. His name was Weyland, though I’d heard one of the hunters refer to him as Waylard during my last visit. Considering how the man’s gut spilled over his belt, it was an apt nickname. Only the fact that I could sense mana and knew there was nothing magical about that belt kept me from thinking it had to be enchanted to still be holding against that prodigious belly.

Weyland had set himself up well. There was nothing stopping the hunters from trading directly with each other, but that meant having someone to trade with. Since there were virtually no permanent residents, a hunter could end up sitting for weeks waiting for someone to show up with something they wanted to trade for.

Weyland had sidestepped that issue by giving up his profession and founding the trading post, which was guarded by two overly-bulgy and overzealous bouncers. Both were closer to seven feet than six in height and looked to be sculpted out of pure muscle. Neither had said a word in my presence, but I got the distinct impression that they wouldn’t blink at an order to manhandle a four-year-old.

“I’m not looking for a handout,” I said. “I need wood, and I’ve got stuff to trade if you have what I need.”

“Kid, I’m not interested in whatever rocks you picked up off the ground. Get lost,” Weyland said.

I rolled my eyes and reached into my satchel to pull out the dead scorpion. “Found this on my way here,” I said. “Venom sac on it should be completely full.”

Weyland’s gaze sharpened with interest, and he took the scorpion from me by gingerly pinching it at the tail. “Black lowland striker,” he muttered. “You’re lucky it didn’t get you. Okay, maybe we can make a deal. What kind of wood are you talking about? I can’t see you needing a bow stave.”

“A bow stave… would work, I suppose, but no, that’s not specifically what I’m looking for. I was thinking more of a walking stick.”

“Sized for you?” Weyland asked with a full-belly laugh.

“Yes, for me,” I said. I was starting to get annoyed now. The man smelled foul and I was afraid I’d need to use magic to get his stink off the merchandise after he handed it over. His breath, currently washing over me, was even worse. “Something made of hardwood, straight and true. No knots or warping.”

“Ah, hrmm. Well now, I might have something for you, but you’d better have something else in that bag of yours if you want it.”

“I’ve got a few other pieces,” I assured the fat man.

Weyland disappeared into his store room, nimble for a man so big, and came back a moment later with a staff five feet long. It had a dark red color, and had been sanded then polished to a shine. “It’s a bit tall for you, but you’ll grow into it,” he said. “If you can afford it.”

I couldn’t even begin to imagine where Weyland had found something like that here. Every tree I’d ever seen was a twisted and scraggly thing. Whoever had harvested it had known how rare it was, and it had been exquisitely prepared. It was perfect.

I had to have it.

“Let’s see if I’ve got something else in here to tempt you,” I told Weyland as I reached back into my satchel.

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