Snakes and Ladders-39

Chapter 39

*Before…

We sort of stop and we’re doing this sort of linked up kind of processing about all of the stuff we’ve been talking about and she steps up to the food tables.

“After we eat you and me we’ll take Bhlaze out and we’ll practice.”

“Flying patrol, and isn’t it dangerous out there?”

“Flying patrol and it is dangerous and we have Bhlaze with us so we have a dragon to watch over us.”

“And while we’re gone?”

“We help Kyte out with her family and leave her in charge.”

I smile. “That’s actually a good idea, her cousin Rafe might have a WTF over that and if not at least it’ll be a good thing for her and her men.”

*And Now…

The food here is something I’m not sure that I’ll ever get used to there’s so much green here that it’s boggling and I just call it salads but they are salads but they’re also a lot of other dishes that are specific even if they’re vegetables and fruits and variations there off.

I know a lot of this is foraged food too.

It’s just some of the stuff that they eat…like how raw meat, raw venison or barely done venison is a thing here with berries or wine on it or vinegars and herbs or salts.

Raw, raw, raw especially with the ranger crowd.

Sylvan sushi.

Though there are things that sort of are growing on me that kind of defy things at home like clear fir balsam that’s mixed with lots of mint and the with other herbs and ground into paste and pepper and it’s sort of like a mustard of a sort that some of them use.

The wild woods flavors are a very cultural thing here though it’s definitely a thing with here in the Holylands since I see Kyte make a face at the smell of it.

I know I talk about this stuff a lot but even when trucking one of the first things that you notice and get a handle on is the food. And if you like or know some of the local faves it goes a whole long way to actually giving you a bit of local credit.

And I might need that since I’m a human living in fairyland.

Wow…there’s a though the TV shows and movies I could film here compared to home, super special effects budgets.

I chuckle around some food and Shaya gives me a little curious link nudge and it’s a little back and forth as she’s still really sort of trying to wrap her head around stuff from home.

They don’t really have TV or commercials or Media or Movies here they have a set of royal com channels that are sort of like c-span and one’s like royal news and announcements and weather warnings and the other one’s is sort of like recorded music and people reading poetry or books.

I mean that’s very, very strange to me.

But then again I’m in a culture that has never actually needed the light bulb and can make magical energy into tangible energies.

And they live…almost obsessively in a way.

Do you know how nice a small farm is here when they have hundreds of years and a thirty six hour day?

Every farming house does things like butter and cheeses and makes their own wine and tea blends and just, just everything here is taken to that whole Tibetan sand painting thing.

And like really taking stuff like that in it’s just really easy to see that I’m very much in a whole other world with all sorts of other standards.

It’s funny though because Shaya is very intrigued by the idea of all of the things that humanity has with our multi-media things and the way we have so many arts forms that her people never even dreamed of.

She’s intrigued by comics and the thought of collecting them is actually very sylvan for her since it’s what her folk tend to do anyways. Collecting is a big thing with her kind it’s a time thing I guess when you live so long there’s a sort of appreciation I can get for things like continuity.

She latches onto the thought of the whole idea of the funnies in the papers and of papers too and they have what they call the sheets and she finishes eating and I finish eating and she looks at me and then at Kyte.

“Wren and Bhlaze and I are going out on a patrol I’m leaving you in charge while we’re gone.”

Kyte blinks pretty surprised looking and so is her brother Rafe who actually looks stunned and his eyes widened and he was looking like it was the last thing that he expected to hear and I shoot both of them an smile and he’s that off his game he actually forgets to glower at us as Shaya and I head off to get ready for our flight and our trip.

“He wasn’t expecting that.”

Shaya nods. “It’s just a temporary thing he’ll be back to being an ass most likely.”

“Okay so how is this going to do things for Kyte?”

“Well it’s not that long but legally and officially she’s in command which means she’s had some more serious command experience or at least according to the records.”

“And that’s a good thing for her, how’s her family going to take it?”

“I don’t know but there’s very often the case that as you call them shitty people hon they’ll ease off while she’s making them look good.”

I nod and help her get everything flight ready and it’s a lot faster now that I have some real one on one experience with doing this myself.

“You think we’ll have to watch out for Rafe?”

Shaya nods. “I do, he will eventually in my opinion try something even if it’s just being an asshole and undermining her authority in from of the men.”

I nod fastening buckles. “It’s unfortunate but there’s a lot of men that will do that to women because they can’t stand a woman gaining even if it helps them too.”

She has this look. “I was like that, just…so jealous of seeing people being everything that I should be.”

I look at her. “Yeah but having a whole shoulda been me dysphoria attack isn’t being a misogynistic dirtbag, women getting to equal men doesn’t take things from them.”

She nods as we finish. “We never have these conversations though, there’s this whole secrecy about being a tryst or a twyst.”

“Well maybe that’s something that we can try to start, maybe we can get some of the temples involved?”

Shaya shrugs. “That’s more mothers’ domain than mine. I hated the gods and I just assumed that they hated me just the same for having cursed me as I thought that they did.”

“I liked church at home; there was still a whole lot of good and wonderful things there in being a Christian.”

“So how does having one god stack up to actually meeting another race and everything else?”

“Uhm…that my faith is mine and it’s how I interact with the great divine and that I have been really, really lucky to actually see that there is such a bigger and much more wonderful universe than anything that I knew.”

She helps me on and she smiles as I don’t need as much help actually settling in.

“We’re linked though and I’ve seen your people and how they see faith and what they do.”

I kiss her. “Honestly Shaya I’m still at a loss of the hard questions in the big picture way but I see it as…if your gods are real mine must be or can be too and that they all just might be the same thing but I’m not the person to figure that all out.”

“If your gods of light types stand for things that I believe in well…then we’re fine.”

She grins. “It’s that be decent to me and I’ll be decent to you?”

“Yeah pretty much that whole do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.”

“Oh that’s more poetic.”

“That’s from the bible hon, you were quoting Eminem.”

“Eminem?”

I laugh. “He’s sort of a performer, it’s called rap.”

“Why?”

“Not a clue honestly it’s a racial developed and adapted urban sort of chanting poetry with a rhythm.”

“Okay that sounds pretty.”

I’m laughing as we take off with Bhlaze running and then there’s this boost with Shaya aboard this time and it’s like she helps him shoot off the ground somehow by like?

Her voice in in my head. ~ We pushed off the magnetic field of the planet.`

~Oh…well that makes sense.~

There’s actually a lot of physics and stuff in magic which kind of really makes all those scenes in D&D where there’s all those wizards with labs and all the books and everything.

Bhlaze’s wings snap out and we sail up and I can feel it too…he rides magnetic fields as much as air currents.

~Do all dragons do this?~

He answers. ~To some extent it’s different for very specific ones but we do things mystically in our own ways, fire and storm dragons are some of the best fliers, sea dragons or water dragons the best swimmers and are deadly strong and armored.~

~Oh…depth and pressure adaptations?~

~Exactly and actually the dragon race itself is literally our ethnics as it were as mystical adaptations occurred.~

~Oh that makes a lot of sense!~

We bank and we rise and turn going over the immediate valley and we’re looking out really intently all over again because for all of the talking we are for all intensive purposes in enemy territory.

The land is so darkly green with so much being these really intense evergreens but dark colored leaves for hardwoods are also here and there and then there’s this whole thing that might be regional or magical but there’s lots of vines and ivys and hanging mosses in the trees too that make this really dense and hard to see through canopy.

And it’s hills and buttes and bluffs and it’s really just super hard terrain and honestly I’d be lost pretty quick and maybe dead soon after and that’s just the survivalist stuff not knowing the flora and fauna here and then there’s the enemy.

With all of the history here of conflicts and the things called in it’s unlike anything I know of at all with the non-sylvan’s and the inhuman races and then there the beasts and monsters too and part of me is very glad that the Sylvan’s have the forethought to blockage the place.

I’m still not sure how I feel though about them having all that advanced ship weaponry and not resolving it from space and having the whole respect at that level for The Holy Planet.

I’m actually very sure that humans as a race if we had this open up and be like this place here that we’d come together and we’d nuke and bomb the hell out of it with no regard for how religious or historically significant it might have been.

It’s just so highlighting the very big difference between us and them.

Bhlaze thinks at me. ~No, it’s not that. That was argued and one major point kept coming up and it wasn’t tradition. ~

~Oh…well that was? ~

Shaya hops in mentally. ~The unknown, there’s a lot of gates here and there’s things that were left behind by both the C’thull and the Forsaken that if hit from ship weaponry could unleash untold devastation…maybe even do something that might destroy the planet.~

~Destroy the planet? ~

~Like missile ordinance hitting something like a gateway to the elemental plane of fire. The energies from that gate could magnify that explosion ten to a hundred fold and then that damages the mantle enough and it gets boosted by the gate that no one can get to, to shut it down and it all just keeps burning.~

~Oh holy crow, just…~

My mind sort of boggles at that for a few moments before it sort of settles too. We have the same thing but different home. There’s things that can be targeted and there’s things that can’t for the repercussions in either payback or just plainly what would happen.

The Universe is vast.

The Universe is small.

We don’t actually go that far by dragon wings and Shaya and Bhlaze find this bluff that’s got a flat top and it’s about the size of a football field and it’s a good hundred foot climb from the bottom of the ravines around it.

The only people that will see us are those that can fly already and we land and take off the things that we packed and get down to the gear that we’ll be using and wearing to start to train and to spar.

The first is exercises and warm ups and that’s completely different than what I was taught in Steadfast and Ramparts.

There’s stretching sure but then Shaya has me channeling power while I’m doing that.

“Shouldn’t I be learning how to do this without the magic?”

“You have been and we will but you wanted to learn how I fight and how Jerek fought and to really train.”

I nod.

Breathe, stretch, channel and fill my muscles with mana just like I have living energy like electricity and food energy going through it and use it to push…push off and jump.

Yeah an eight foot standing jump in the air and I land on my butt and back.

Eight feet…that’s literally impossible for mortal people to like do outside of movies.

Shaya pushes the thought of up at me and I get up.

She wasn’t pleased even at that.

I was supposed to power up, like Kick-up or Kip-up but with my power still going and then we’re training again.

Jumping and leaping and learning control and learning how to maneuver as she shots at me.

I didn’t know that when she is in physical contact with Bhlaze she can fire things like a stun-bolt at will pretty much.

Stun-bolts are like energy darts that fly from her hand and hit like a taser.

Okay not quite that bad but they will daze you good, they’ll set you on your ass every time and it’s my bonded and my love and lover that’s firing at me teaching me how to control my empowered body.

For hours.

Did I mention a thirty six hour day yet?
Next is doing all of that with the sword and that’s when she joins me with sparing and we go through fast and acrobatic or at least gymnastic sort of fighting and I get to feel some of Shaya’s speed and then her strength as she pours power into herself as she’s fighting.

She’s smaller than me and it’s surprising just how hard she strikes when I block her strikes.

Or when she hits me.

Hard…That my god and her gods for the armor that I’m wearing.

Then after we spar for a while and she hands me my ass she’ll go through everything and teach me the moves, the hows and the why’s.

“Wren…take the memory charm that Bhlaze taught you and apply that to your body…instead of calling things up though use it to record this, all of this and apply it directly to your body using magic to reinforce your muscle memory.”

Well…okay then…

And boy oh girl was that easier said than done.

It’s trying to pour power into the feeling of everything you’re doing while you’re trying to boost everything you’re doing and trying to spar and train and keep from getting your patootie kicked.

But after a few more hours I’m getting used to that even as I’m getting just crazy exhausted from doing all of these things.

We stop and she looks at me. “Okay let’s break and we can set up camp.”

“We’re not going back?”

“Not tonight, I want Kyte to have a full night of command. It’ll look better and it’ll be better than just us being gone for part of the day.”

“Good point.”

“Plus we’re going to be doing a lot more training.”

“Oh damn.”

We stop and get out of our armor and we set up a fire and our bedrolls and she takes out things to cook like ranger rations and it’s a pot of water and these bricks of salt and poultry with dried chopped veggies and herbs and salt and it’s all bound up into dried noodles.

Holy cheese we’re having sylvan instant ramen.