Dungeon’s Path -
Vision Quest – Chapter 308
Time passes as Doyle waits on his next floor. While this is happening, Tess has sunk into learning magic, delving quite deeply into training. Some might even say to an unhealthy degree.
Though since she had been stating herself to be a melee fighter, Tess had more than enough Constitution to handle it. If only she hadn’t hit a roadblock on her progress. No matter how much she tried to delve into the various magic types, there seemed to be a mental block or lack of talent that stopped her.
Now, this isn’t unique to Tess and it wasn’t the classical elements opposing one another conflict, either. Kelly was excellent with fire magic, but had nothing stopping her when it came to water or even ice magic. No, there were simply certain things that were clearly outside of a person’s wheelhouse and not just with magic.
All of the powers and even the powers themselves had various degrees of compatibility with people. In a way, this was part of how Ace’s group managed to grow so fast. Through instincts, past experiences, or simple luck, they had all settled on paths suited to them.
Outside of the inner circle of Wolf’s Rest, a decent portion of the population found themselves having to change focus or simply face an impenetrable dead end. Worse, despite all of the foreign folks manning the various system stores, no one could figure out the reason.
Though Kelly had a guess. Her idea was simple enough, their version of humanity was too diverse and they didn’t have any scholars in town to help. They certainly wouldn’t be the first to face this problem and in fact, you could almost say that other races are even more restricted by it.
So far, the only outside people anyone had talked to were either shopkeepers or tutorial people who weren’t exactly the well-learned sort. Of course, Kelly used this as a chance to push for the system library Ace could buy for the town. Ace still said no, but she could tell he was close to agreeing.
As for the other races facing this problem, and yet not knowing? Well, even other human populations tended to be restricted to two to three power types. Even then, any one person tended to be clearly better with one of their options over the others.
The tutorial taught people to focus on one power not because you couldn’t train more, but because barring exceptions, most could only go far in one power. Then there was Ace and all the other humans on this planet. Despite Kelly’s best efforts, she was certain she hadn’t even discovered half the power type everyone seemed at least partially able to use.
Beyond that, she hadn’t even started on looking into the sub-elements of a power, which was where Tess was struggling. While she was particularly good at using magic, she hadn’t figured out the way forward like Kelly found with her fire ribbons. Tess needed to discover an element that called to her and so after over a week of grueling work, she decided to try something she had read once.
It was one of those new age meditation books that claimed to have knowledge from all sorts of “mystical” heritages. Tess hadn’t really been all that interested in the book itself, but when your plane gets delayed for hours and everyone else had already grabbed the magazines, you did what you could. Not that she remembered much from it except one of the simple “vision quest” style mediations.
It was simple enough if you achieved any competency with meditation. Which, after focusing on magic, she had picked up. The gist of it was to mentally place yourself in a natural environment and then allow yourself to wander until something showed up to guide you. There was even the personal experience of the author included.
Though that was all about him finding a cave and having a giant salamander give him a ruby gem or some such. Oh, and he tore apart his mental form before rebuilding it, all under the guide of that salamander. Suffice it to say, Tess was more than a little leery about that last bit, hell, she was leery about the spirit guide part as well.
After all, magic was real, so why couldn’t spirit guides be as well? Still, she wanted to try and so went to Kelly for help. A wise decision, though neither would truly know what changes this help caused.
Still, even if this was all based on the subconscious and had no connection to the outside world, it never hurt to use a circle of protection or two. In fact, Kelly ended up using three circles. They couldn’t block the physical, but has shown to be at least partially effective against ranged magic, so worth a try.
As for why use three circles? Well, two of them were easy enough to explain. The outer circle was to keep things out and the innermost circle was to keep things in.
It was the center circle that was highly experimental and maybe even questionable. In theory, the other two should be enough. Kelly had even managed to weasel out of the various system provided workers that a double circle of protection was a classic set up.
Kelly wanted to go further, though. So they set the center circle of protection up to block meaning. A strange, though oft used circle. Even if it was generally used by itself. The main purpose was to screen out memetic effects from stuff like cursed texts and corrupted artwork. It wasn’t perfect, but when it failed, there tended to be a nice display of colors when it happened.
So, with circles set up and Tess carefully ensconced in the middle, she attempted to find her path. Of course, it would be too easy if this just worked. While she was able to picture herself in a natural scene and wander around, even imagining some random critters, nothing clicked.
The result disappointed Tess, but Kelly was ecstatic. After all, it meant her circle of protection set up had worked. That or the technique didn’t, but Kelly brushed that off with the fact that far too many cultures possessed some form of vision quest. In her words, it had to have been the result of bleed over from souls. Sort of like how the various deities and such were real.
So if Tess was going to continue seeking an answer through this method, one circle was going to have to be disabled. Tess was all ready to remove the outer circle, but Kelly stopped her. While letting in what is outside might seem like the most direct way to get help, Kelly thought otherwise.
To Kelly, any proper source of inspiration should be able to reach you, even in a protection circle like Tess had been. From Kelly’s studies, the weak circles she could make tended to not affect higher powers all that much unless she was specifically targeting the power. So to her, the better option was to disable the innermost circle so that Tess could call out and invite in help.
With the circles being Kelly’s work and the fact that even if this fails, they can try the other way, Tess ends up agreeing to try it with the innermost circle disabled. And this time, it worked. As Tess delved into her imaginary land, it shifted into forms she hadn’t meant for it to take and animals both familiar and not appeared just outside of her line of sight.
On her journey, three entities appeared as Tess traveled. Each offering an answer, which she easily turned down. Partly because she could feel that the answer wasn’t really suitable for her. While things like a magical rage might have been tempting to her right after, yeah, when she was at her lowest.
Now that she had time to settle, Tess could feel the false power behind those lies. More to the point though, it seemed that Kelly’s middle circle was putting in some work. Tess could only call those who made the offers “entities” because they weren’t able to fully manifest within her vision quest. Instead, they remained as if shadows outlined in jarring edges, which clashed with the reality of her vision.
After Tess passed those temptations by, she finally came upon something that felt real without clashing. That seemed both alien to her dream and yet one with it. In front of her appeared a decent sized hill with a gentle slope.
There were other paths to take, but Tess felt drawn and so climbed the hill, which was both more real than reality and her not of reality. The climb was easy and she almost turned back, having expected her quest to be one of struggle and hardship, though she admitted to herself that sometimes peace was the hardest and so kept climbing until she reached the top.
From there, she could see that this wasn’t just a simple hill, rather it was a mound like some ancient cultures built. This one taking the shape of a bird, the rest hidden from her as she climbed up the tip of the beak. Which not only was higher than the rest, likely to allow exactly this view, but surrounded by dense trees.
Trees which ended a short distance past where the beak began, with all the other potential paths she had felt leading deeper into said trees. Past the beak though, it turned into an open plains. As Tess stares out over this scene, a bird flies over from the forest and lands next to her.
The bird was ruby red, with highlights of a color that Tess was stopped from recognizing. Though, unlike the other entities, she could tell that this was not being done by the circle. Rather, for her benefit the being had willingly shrouded themselves.
They stood there in silence, a human and a small bird. While time passes within the dream, the bird was removed from such things and Tess, in turn followed it beyond. Tess turned back to the scene of ancient dirt mounds and fruitful plains, just letting the scenery draw her in.
Neither made a sound, but the next thing Tess knew she was alone. The only thing to show that the bird had been there was a single claw mark in the ground, though said mark was sized more like that of an eagle. Still, the time spent had been more than enough of a gift. Unlike the author of that book she had read so long ago, she didn’t need some mental knickknack to represent her experience.
So with a lightness in her step that had been missing ever since, Tess retraced her path back to the beginning. Along the way, she saw the three entities, but those fell creatures pulled back from her and hid within the shadows as she passed. Then, once she completed the return trip, Tess woke up.
In the end, it took her a little over three hours to complete her vision quest. As for what she gained? More valuable than some creatures’ power, it showed her a path forward which she could follow.
The mound in the plains, an area of great harvest. If the field was a real place, Tess would guess some culture had built it both in celebration of the good times, while being prepared for the bad. The beak penetrates into the dark forest where things dwelt that shouldn’t and provides a lookout.
While enough time had passed for all signs to be erased, Tess knew without knowing that fires once burnt on that hill’s peak more than once to warn people of coming danger. Yet now the flame had been silent for a time beyond her reckoning and in the same way that the land had healed those scars, Tess needed to heal as well.
There was fire in her heart, yes, but for now her magic sought another outlet. And thus the inner circle of Wolf’s Rest gained their second healer. Not that she would set down her staff, no, she would be a healer on the front line so she could stop what had happened to her from happening to others. And maybe, there would be a time for cleansing fire in the future.
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