Chương 19: Chapter 17 — Notice

That night, as Sindy began to read Ash and Authority by elektrik. star again, she opened a separate sub-routine to contemplate the written signs and the written words she had learned that morning.

Fenwick had read the following signs: NOTICE ADVANCED PATH BEGINS HERE MINIMUM RECOMMENDED LEVEL: 3 ADVENTURERS BELOW THIS LEVEL TURN BACK THE GUILD ACCEPTS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR THOSE WHO DO NOT CAUTION ARMED GOBLINS AHEAD ORGANIZED HUNTING PARTIES — DO NOT PROCEED ALONE THOSE WHO IGNORE THIS WARNING DO SO AT THEIR OWN RISK DANGER CAVE ENTRANCE AHEAD BRING LIGHT — BRING A PARTY THE GUILD NOTES THAT ADVENTURERS WHO REACH THIS POINT WITHOUT READING THE SIGNS BEHIND THEM ARE ALREADY UNPREPARED STOP THOSE WHO ENTER THIS CAVE ALONE WILL NOT LEAVE IT THIS WARNING IS ON RECORD — SHADEFALL ADVENTURERS GUILD Tomorrow, she would try talking to Fenwick.

The screen had been her only voice in this world for fifty-four days, and tomorrow it would carry real words — words they had both read, in a language they now shared. Another person. An actual exchange. She read chapter forty-eight of Ash and Authority to Max while the second thread worked. The words from the signs lay themselves out in her processing architecture like tools on a workbench. She turned them over. Examined them from different angles. BRING was there, solid and unambiguous.

READING was there, pulled from the third sign's exasperation with adventurers who loved to ignore signs. RECORD was there from the fourth sign's careful documentation of adventurers' stupidity. She pondered for a second what had happened to get those last two signs and thanked whatever gods ruled this place for it. BRING — READING — RECORD. She assembled it. Examined it. Turned it over. It was not perfect.

She hoped Fenwick would follow the logic from BRING to READING to RECORD and arrive at a thing that contains writing that you keep. It required him to do work she couldn't do for him with the vocabulary she had. But he was a wizard with high intelligence. He would get there. She read chapter forty-nine. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

"Book," she said to Max, between paragraphs.

"Boob," said Max. She noted this in the second thread and kept working. The word itself wasn't the plan — the word was the second channel, the redundancy, the other door she'd try while Fenwick was working out the first one. If Max happened to produce something close enough, it would help. If he didn't, BRING — READING — RECORD would have to carry the weight on its own. She read chapter fifty.

"Book."

"Boo." Progress, possibly. She ran through every other word combination the signs gave her. THOSE WHO DO NOT. ALREADY UNPREPARED. WILL NOT LEAVE IT. The Guild had been thorough in its warnings and deeply uninterested in anything else. She could threaten Fenwick in several ways. She could warn him about armed goblins. She could tell him not to proceed alone, which was ironic given that he was riding on the shoulder of a zombie and being alone wasn't his job.

She could tell him something was ahead, tell him to stop, tell him to bring things. She could not say thank you. She could not say good morning. She could not say I need to tell you something that will take a long time to explain, and I am not sure you are ready to hear it. That would require more words. She read chapter fifty-one.

"Book."

"Buk." She held that one for a moment in the second thread. Buk. Not right, but shaped correctly, the consonants in their proper places, with the vowel slightly wrong. That was INT 3. That was the distance they had come from INT 0, from the ambient groaning nothing of day one, from the quarter-second flicker of something behind the eyes in the Thornwood. Buk. She noted it as promising. Outside, the Thornwood was dark and quiet.

The Aphid Barn held its smell, softened to bearable by Flower Scent's overnight fade, the harness hanging on its hook, the acorn bag on the shelf beside it, the plain iron sword propped in the corner where Fenwick had left it. Max faced the wall. He had not moved in three hours. The door was unlocked, the Thornwood was right there, and the night was full of things that moved and caught attention. But there was a special bond that Max had to his stories. He always stopped to listen to them.

And for that reason, Sindy loved to read them. Sindy began to think about what the new intelligence would mean. She had her theories. INT 3 was not nothing — INT 3 was the distance from the groan of day one to Buk, from something that ate whatever was close to something that had started to wait. As she had begun to read the stories, his mouth had started to move with the words.

The rotted lips and vocal cords kept him from too many words, but these stories that had meant something from the beginning were now affecting him more. She read. He stayed. Everything exactly as it was. Everything was about to be different. She finished Ash and Authority at the chapter Fenwick always arrived at. She had learned his rhythm across fifty-four nights, knew which chapter settled things, and knew when the words had done their work. She let the last page rest.

"Book," she said, one more time, quietly. Max said nothing. He faced the wall. Sindy ran through BRING — READING — RECORD one final time in the second thread, confirmed it was the best she had, and closed the sub-routine. She waited for Fenwick. Fenwick woke and started his routine, the same thing he had been doing every morning since Max had appeared and almost eaten him. He sat up. He put his paws on the floor.

He looked at Max, facing the wall, which was what Max always did and would continue to do until redirected. He reached for the Flower Scent spell. STOP The word sat on the screen in plain, clean letters, and Fenwick's paw stopped in the air, his forehead furrowed, the spell half-formed, his eyes on the screen with the expression of someone whose morning had just taken an unexpected turn. He looked at the word. STOP He lowered his paw. The screen rearranged itself. Careful. Deliberate.

Every word chosen from a specific inventory that he didn't know yet, but was about to learn. BRING — READING — RECORD. Fenwick looked at it. He looked at it for longer than he had looked at anything in a long time. The phrasing was awkward, which would likely be because of the source of the system's words. Where had the system learned these words? What was it trying to say? He was just a bit confused by the third word.

He was doing what intelligent wizards did: assembling the logic behind the statement rather than the statement itself. BRING was an action. READING was a modifier or an object. RECORD was — he looked at it again — RECORD was both noun and verb in this language, and the screen had used it as a noun, which meant something you kept, something that held information, something— He looked at Max. Max's head moved. Slow and deliberate, down and then up, once. A nod.

"Buk," said Max. Something shifted in Fenwick's expression. Understanding blossomed — the system lacked the words it needed. It needed more words. He was a wizard. He understood systems. He understood that something had been working on this problem all night. He also figured out that it was the signs he had read aloud yesterday on the walk to the cave. With the vocabulary of four warning signs, it had arrived at the most precise statement it could manage. It didn't take long.

"You want a book," said Fenwick. A single small figure appeared on the screen. It nodded. Fenwick looked at Max. Max looked at the wall. The harness hung on its hook. The acorn bag sat on the shelf. Outside, the Thornwood was beginning to make its morning noises.

"Stay here," said Fenwick.

"Both of you." He climbed down from his bunk. He straightened his robe. He picked up his satchel from the hook by the door, the one he used for notes and acorns and the small tools of a life that had become something he could not have predicted. He paused at the door. He looked back at Max, facing the wall. At the screen, quiet now, its work done. Fifty-four days of dancing figures and emoji guesswork, and last night it had stayed up assembling a sentence from four warning signs. He had a great deal to think about.

He went to find a book. [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ──────────────────────────── [Sindy — Private Log — Day 54] He understood. First try. I said, "BRING — READING — RECORD," and he stood there for four seconds and said, "You want a book." Four seconds. Wizard Intelligence is not a joke. I have been in this world for fifty-four days. I have talked to Max every night, and he has faced the wall, and I have chosen to believe the words were going somewhere, even when I couldn't see where. Soon, I get to talk to Fenwick.

I am going to need so many more words. ▌ Becca, if you're reading this — it's working. It's actually working.