Chương 59: Chapter 52 — Two Brothers and a New Job

⟨ [NOTIFICATION] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── XP: 4, 850 / 10, 000 Corwin met them at the door. He was a small, grey-brown vole with bright black eyes and silver whiskers, who carried himself with the calm of someone who had spent forty years making difficult things look routine. He took one look at Thomas — the gaunt face, the cave-smell still clinging, the arm held slightly away from the body without Thomas seeming to notice — and waved them inside without asking a single question first.

"Sit," he said.

"Arm out." Thomas sat. He put his arm out. He looked around Corwin's surgery with mild curiosity. Corwin collected many instruments that were not used in a magical field of healing, including the five or six bone saws proudly displayed on one wall. Corwin examined the wound for a long time without speaking. He brought it close to the lamp, turned it once, pressed the skin around the edges with two careful fingers. Picking and prodding while Thomas winced. Corwin noted the wince and pressed once more.

"How long?" he said.

"Eight days," said Fenwick, from the doorway.

"He said it happened on day two." Corwin nodded. He went to the cabinet along the wall — old wood, the handles worn smooth, the shelves organized with the precision of someone who had been putting things back in the same place for a very long time. He produced three jars without hesitation, read their labels anyway, and set them on the workbench.

"Mummy rot," he said.

"Early stage. The discoloration is the tell — normal bruising fades in two days, this hasn't." He began measuring from the first jar.

"A week of treatment. The herbs are bitter, and you will not enjoy them. You will take them anyway." Thomas's face lost some color. Trembling, he nodded.

"You were underground with something undead," said Corwin.

"Something scratched you. This is what scratching does." He was already mixing.

"It's treatable. It would not have been treatable in another week. You're fortunate your brother brought you here." Thomas looked at Fenwick. Fenwick said nothing.

"Thank you," said Thomas to Fenwick, not Corwin. Corwin was already writing the treatment schedule and would not have noticed either way. Nibbles was in his study. He listened to Fenwick's account of Will and his system ability, starting with the breakfast table, the hunger bar at five, the tap on Sindy's screen, and the fixing of the skill. Nibbles' eyes widened as the story continued. His hands were folded on the desk. He did not interrupt. When Fenwick finished, Nibbles was quiet for a moment.

"Bring him in," he said. Will had been waiting in the corridor with Max, which meant he had spent twenty minutes watching Max turn the decorative tile over in his hands and probably learning more about patience than the Order could teach him in a year. He came in without apparent nerves, looked around the study with the same mild assessment Thomas had given Corwin's surgery, and sat down when Nibbles gestured to the chair. Nibbles looked at him.

"What do you see right now?" he said. Will looked at Max, who was standing to the left of the door.

"Stats. The full overlay. Hunger's at seven, which is better than this morning. There's a locked skill that says Fire Weapon, and two more underneath it that are still fully hidden." He paused.

"There's also a name field that says corrupted, but I think that's been there a while." Nibbles looked at Fenwick. They both pulled up their systems, too.

"Can you see them?" Nibbles asked. Will looked above their system and chuckled for a second.

"Bubblebutt is a very unusual middle name." Nibbles looked back at Will.

"Okay, okay, I believe you. It's a family name, from my mother's side." He cleared his throat.

"Has this always been the case? The ability to see these things?"

"As long as I can remember," said Will.

"I thought it was normal until Fenwick's face this morning." Nibbles was quiet for a moment.

"It is not normal," he said.

"What you are describing is the ability to see system overlays. Normally, the only time this is possible is as part of the magic that allows the summoning ritual itself to grant access to those present at the ceremony. It allows the Order to track and guide a new hero in an unfamiliar world." He paused.

"You were not present at the summoning. The Order has never trained you. And yet you see everything that Fenwick sees. Furthermore, you see system windows that are given to initiates when they enter the Order." Will considered this.

"Is that bad?" The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

"It is extraordinary," said Nibbles.

"It suggests an incredibly rare talent. I don't know if it is just this Order's systems you can see or all systems, but either way—" He looked at his desk for a moment, then back up.

"I would like you to consider joining the Order. Not because we need you — though we do. But because whatever this ability is, it should be understood. And the Order is where that understanding happens." Will looked at his hands. Then at Max. Then at Fenwick.

"I'll think about it," he said. Nibbles nodded. That was enough for now. Thomas's account went into the record that afternoon. Fenwick had him sit with Marvella. She took notes, careful and thorough. Thomas wasn't trained for this, but he'd had three days with nothing to do but go over it in his head, and it showed. The worked stone. The square-cut passages, smooth walls, and deliberate construction. Older than the hall, possibly older than the settlement itself.

Writing on the walls he couldn't read, felt more than saw, grooves in patterns he couldn't identify. The scale of the system: chambers large enough to swallow sound, passages that branched constantly, the sense of something vast extending beyond where he'd gone. The sounds from further in. Weight, movement, something with mass to it. Ongoing. Patient. It had not stopped. Marvella wrote it all down. When Thomas finished, she looked at her notes for a long moment, then at the map on the wall behind her desk.

"The tunnel under the settlement connects to the same system," she said. It was not a question.

"Has to," said Thomas.

"We went through that back wall, and we didn't come back out of it. We came out of the hillside. Whatever's in there goes under the whole valley." Marvella added a notation to the map. A line, starting from the settlement and running east, connecting to the shape Fenwick had been building for weeks. The shape now had a new dimension. The party sent to seal the cave left the following morning. Three Order members — one senior, two junior, with experience in cave work and tunnel assessment.

Will went with them, partly as a guide and partly because Nibbles had asked him to. Nibbles needed. Will either be away from the Order or part of it. His ability was too strong to be used in areas with heavy traffic. If he returned to join the Order, great; otherwise, a sod farmer was a good place to keep him away from trouble. Will had said yes without much deliberation. Fenwick suspected this was not a coincidence.

He watched them go from the courtyard, wondering if his Mother would be very mad at him for trying to take Will away, too. The guild hall smelled of old wood and ink. The board on the far wall held its postings — more now than when they'd left, the pattern visibly denser, the dates shrinking between notices. A deer with reading spectacles and the tired eyes of someone who processed bad news for a living looked up when they entered. Fenwick placed the report on the desk. She read it.

Halfway down the second page, she stopped, read that section again, and looked up at the board. She began to pull out change forms again. Sighing, she started pulling down the missing-persons postings again. When she finished, she set the report on the desk and looked at Fenwick properly for the first time.

"You'll want Harrow," she said.

"He manages the pattern postings." Harrow was a bison, broad across the shoulders, who took up more of the doorframe than he needed to. He crossed the room without hurrying, read the report standing, one hand flat on the table, his expression unchanged from the first line to the last. When he finished, he looked down at the guild clerk and asked, "Are you updating the posting with this new information?" The clerk looked up from her rushed writing.

"Of course, sir." Harrow motioned Fenwick and Max to the back, where he had his desk, and produced a map from the cabinet behind him — regional, detailed, updated within the last month for those who needed it. He began placing markers. Each posting on the board had a location. Each location went on the map. The markers went down one at a time, and the shape they made was not immediately obvious, but then it was.

"There," said Fenwick. Harrow looked at the cluster.

"Four days out. Give or take. The terrain gets older past the Millward crossroads. Less traveled." He touched three markers along the eastern edge.

"The postings from this region stopped after the third week. Whatever is happening, it moved inward."

"Or finished with the edges," said Fenwick. Harrow looked at him.

"Yes," he said.

"Or that." He straightened and looked at the map. The spacing between the dates had shortened over the past two weeks. Harrow had clearly noticed before today.

"We need eyes on the center," said Harrow.

"Before this goes further up. I have two teams capable of this kind of work. One is three weeks out on a contract in the northern pass. The other took injuries on their last posting — nothing permanent, but they're not fit for something like this." He looked at Fenwick.

"Which brings us to the question of who goes."

"We go," said Fenwick. Harrow looked at Max. At the sword on his back. At the ring on his hand and the face above it, alive and present and faintly, indefinably wrong.

"Level?" he said.

"Four," said Fenwick. Harrow considered this. Not long. The math was simple, and the timeline was not.

"Scout only," he said.

"Observe, document, return. You find the edge of it, you mark the location, you come back. You do not go further than you need to."

"Understood," said Fenwick. Max was looking at the map. He had moved to the table at some point without anyone marking when, and stood looking at the markers with the focused attention he gave things that interested him. His eyes moved across the cluster. Stopped at the center. He put his finger on it.

"There," he said. The same word Fenwick had used. No particular weight behind it. Just the location, identified. Harrow looked at him for a moment. Then at Fenwick.

"And not engage," said Harrow.

"If possible." Nobody disagreed with him. The map sat on the table between them, the markers forming their shape, Max's finger still resting at its center. ⟨ [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ⟩ ──────────────────────────── [Sindy — Private Log — Day 83] Thomas is on the herb treatment. He described it as "aggressively unpleasant," which I think is accurate. Will said he'd think about the Order. Nibbles seemed satisfied with that. The sealing party left this morning. Will went with them. Fenwick filed the report.

Harrow put the markers on the map. Max put his finger on the center. ▌ Becca, if you're reading this: ▌ We've been given the job. ▌ Scout only. Observe, document, return. ▌ We both know how those instructions tend to go.