Chương 7: Sage Lessons

During his warren stay Mark slept three times, ate three times, and held seventeen separate conversations with himself to prove he could still form coherent thoughts. Finding a squirrel in the rodent pile instead of a rat counted as a victory, but he still couldn't convince himself to eat the fungi. For some reason he still hadn't needed to use the communal toilet despite drinking quite a bit of water at the spring. He assumed that meant that kobolds must have been very good at conserving water.

He seemed to recall this was common in reptiles. The community chamber pulled Mark back a few times. He sat with the automated kobolds and sorted coins and pebbles, continuously using his magic in the process. All he accomplished was learning way too much about the composition of the coins and pebbles. He had hoped he would eventually go up a level to see if anything changed, but he wasn't alerted to any progress.

Mark also got a few herb lessons from the elderly kobold automaton who had patted his snout during the whole outburst he had when he gained his first chemoreception level up. She called herself Sage but unfortunately still called Mark B52 due to his outburst, and he could not get her to change this. Mark had chosen herb work, which did not offer any innate ability growth, but did offer knowledge he was actually interested in. Currently he was a physician in a world where he knew no available medications.

While simple home remedies and herbs would not be nearly as effective as modern medicine, Mark wanted to at least have some idea of what options he had available to work with here. One herb that dulled pain and fever seemed to be similar to Earth's willow bark which was the original source of aspirin's active compound. Another ginger-like herb settled nausea if he tucked it in his cheek and let it dissolve. Remembering the teleportation that brought him here, he thought that might be very useful.

Sage also taught Mark about lavender which Mark knew could be helpful with anxiety and in Europe a lavender oil extract had actually been converted into a prescription medication for exactly this purpose. Well if Europe actually existed. The first time he worked with the lavender, he treated it like the willow bark and ground the dried buds into a fine powder, certain that was all he needed to do. Sage took the pestle back before he could tip the bowl out.

"Dust not medicine yet, B52. Dust blows away." She let a few drops of oil fall into the bowl and worked them through the powder until all of it pulled together into a coarse, fragrant paste.

"Now medicine. Oil holds the calm in. Here-here. You try." She scooped a little and asked him to stick his tongue out and she smeared some onto the tip of his forked tongue. He was a bit wary but brought his tongue inside his mouth and pressed it up against the receptor organ in the roof of his mouth. The aroma did not arrive so much as detonate. With this lavender paste he sensed what could only be called a flood of cool herbaceous sweetness.

It was so dense it crowded out thought, and for a moment it was almost too much. Then all at once he felt the tension that had been with him since he was dropped into this world loosen somewhat. The constant fear of being trapped here in this world and even worse in this pouch suddenly seemed less of a concern. Mark had always been a skeptic about supplements.

He remembered there was too little regulation and too few solid studies to trust most of what was sold, and yet the calm spreading through him now was hard to argue with.

"Good herb," he said.

"Calm herb," Sage agreed, and patted the top of Mark's snout. Mark's second attempt went too far in the other direction. Overcorrecting for the dust, he accidentally drowned the powder in oil until the bowl held a thin lavender slick that ran off the pestle and refused to gather into anything at all.

"Too much-much, B52. Now soup, not paste." She tipped it out, unbothered, and set a fresh measure in front of him.

"Try again. You learn good-good." His third attempt actually worked quite well, and he was rewarded with another pat on his snout and her praising him by saying the canned responses. This time Sage actually took the paste and put it on her tongue and alerted him it was good-good. Mark did his best to forget that the kindness she was showing was just a script. She then moved on to the next lesson. Other herbs started to blend together but there were some for pain, attention, sleep, and even energy.

Most probably had some sort of Earth analogue, though Mark's knowledge of botany was thin. The energy and attention ones he felt were probably caffeine from two different sources used for two different purposes. A few of Sage's herbs clearly had no Earth analogue, like the green mushroom flecked with pink and purple that was supposed to boost magic capability. It was this green mushroom magic booster that Mark really was excited to make.

Sage taught Mark how to use a mortar and pestle to grind up the herbs and separate the active ingredients. Mark had somehow also gotten Sage to teach him to take the active ingredient of the magic mushroom to create a drink to increase magic potential. He was very excited about this concept and had created three of these potions before testing them. To store the potion Sage gave Mark two clay canteen-like devices then informed him those were rare, so B52 needed to not break them.

For the third potion all he got to store was what appeared to be a hollowed-out mushroom that he was surprised to see didn't immediately leak out. Testing the potion was a quiet letdown. The only thing he noticed differently when assessing his weak magic was he now knew the exact age of the metal in a nearby button and the soil report from before now named the specific mushrooms and plants he might grow in his chamber.

He fortunately didn't use much of a potion for that trial so kept the two full containers and the partially used one in the mushroom in his chamber to see if Wes may have some use for them. This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience. Sage was a good teacher as she would review earlier information often to ensure he didn't get things mixed up with learning so much at once.

She did keep patting Mark on the snout which he felt was odd but as much as he was thirsty for real connection in this dimensional warren there were a few moments he actually forgot she was an automaton. Those moments usually ended quickly though due to her calling him B52. She did randomly say that it was odd for a young male kobold to be so interested in herbs, and to be good at it so quickly and asked Mark once if he was sure he didn't want to go learn from her mate to use a bow and arrow.

Mark declined, and wondered if this was going to be a problem if he met real kobolds. He remembered hearing from his female peers throughout the years how they were often considered the nurse when they entered the room despite introducing themselves as the doctor. Would anyone accept Mark if he tried to treat a wound because he was male? Wes had shown no particular worry about his memories being that of a mind healer.

His only concern had been not knowing what a mind healer did, and the fact that Mark remembered being human. So perhaps if there was prejudice about males being healers the prejudice lived in kobold warrens only. Either way, it joined the growing list of things he had never once expected to worry about. He surprisingly did receive a notification after working at this for what felt like several hours. Congratulations! You have ranked up a learned skill.

As a non-citizen you do not have access to this list but are still notified when you advance to a new ranking. Herbalism - 16 - apprentice As an apprentice you will now be granted the additional skill to never forget the purpose of herbs you have used and you will instinctively remember the best method of distilling their properties from your previous attempts. Congratulations! Mark was astonished at that benefit.

That seemed very helpful especially since he was already learning so much he was afraid he would forget it. He didn't know what to think about being unable to forget things though. There was more to learn, but the sheer volume wore Mark down and he felt his brain needed to rest. He eventually left with a string of thank-yous he actually meant. He had to keep reminding himself, Sage was a script wearing the body of a kobold, and not an actual person.

What made it difficult was that the script was kind, and kindness on a loop was still the closest approximation of a friend he had found down here. After leaving Sage he explored a bit more and ended up back in the praying chamber from before. This time he foolishly tried to get the kobolds to explain to him what they were doing. Who were they praying to? Unfortunately one of the chanters was determined to answer him and gave Mark far more information than he desired.

The chanter started asking Mark to pray to their great scaled master and informed him that praying to their dragon master would be the solution to all of Mark's needs and wants, and that Mark would be filled with bliss by serving his guardian and devoting all of his free time to praying. The zealot also kept asking Mark if he wanted to read the draconic scriptures to learn the purpose of kobolds. Mark declined as he imagined the purpose in the texts would probably just involve serving dragons.

The worst part of this ordeal was the zealot had no real concept of boundaries. This dragon zealot followed Mark everywhere. Even when Mark went to his chamber the zealot followed him and remained outside of his chamber asking to be invited in. Since there were no doors the zealot just stayed outside Mark's room looking in and asked Mark over and over if he would like to read the dragon scriptures to learn more about their guardian dragon.

It took several minutes of Mark feigning going to sleep in his nest which finally caused the chanter to go back to his prayer room. He had very nearly agreed to take the dragon scriptures just to see if that would end the loop and allow the zealot to leave. The longer the time stretched, the more Mark wondered whether Wes had decided he was too much trouble. Had Wes possibly abandoned him and Mark would be stuck here to forever live in this dimensional warren? The worst moment came after a dream.

Mark had been reliving a memory from last summer where he was running beside Emma's bike. The best part he remembered was watching her face light up when she realized she was riding alone. It had been a vivid and delightful dream, but awakening to scales after feeling back at home like that provoked ten minutes of sobs. After the dream it did provoke Mark to scratch Sarah and Emma's names in the wall just in case his memories started to disappear like Wes suggested.

By Mark's best estimate, somewhere between forty and fifty hours had passed. However it had felt like an eternity. After his third rat meal, Mark had spent several minutes shouting at the ceiling and demanding to know why he deserved this torture. He had reached the decision to spend this wake cycle going back up to the community chamber and learn about traps from the bear trap maker when reality twisted and yanked him back to Wes's room with all the grace of a cosmic bailiff serving an eviction notice.

Mark landed flat on his back on Wes's hard stone floor. It was just as cold as the last time he had fallen on it. Wes's face hovered above him, so he must have expected him to land where he did. The rough transport made Mark's inner ear rebel enough that he wished he had some of that ginger he had received from Sage. Unfortunately he had left it behind. The herbs, the potions, the paste, all of it was still in his warren chamber.

Evidently in order for it to transfer with him he had to be holding it like he did with the button while going into the dimensional pouch. When Mark spoke the words tumbled faster than his forked tongue could shape them, which caused his sibilants to hiss even more than usual. Mark was not excited that this made him sound much more like the kobolds he had just spent so much time with in the dimensional warren.

"Oh, thank God. I thought you'd abandoned me, that I'd pushed too hard about me being human and you were punishing me or forgot I existed or… those things kept praying and I kept waiting… and I had no idea if I was going to have to spend the rest of my life in that place."

"Hey." Wes knelt, hands hovering as if he wanted to help and was terrified of making contact.

"I wasn't punishing you. I had the monitor running the entire time." He held up the strange spiky instrument from before.

"You're at ninety-five percent stability. No dissolution signs present. You're safe." The device trembled in Wes's hands.

"Your readings spiked once late last night and I nearly pulled you, but you settled. No other unusual spikes again until this morning, maybe two hours ago, while I was away. That one stayed high, so I pulled you the moment I got back."

"How long was I in there?" Mark pushed himself up.

"Fifteen hours."