Markets and Multiverses

We spent the next several months working on our runes. Apart from building runes, we spent a lot of time with each other, getting to know each other and learning to trust each other and work together more effectively. We also told stories about our previous worlds whenever the adults weren’t paying attention.

Felix relished learning more about my world’s technology, so I told him about the gadgets and innovations I remembered from home whenever I could. The gaps in my memory made it hard to describe some things, but I could still remember the basics of things like airplanes, phones, trains. Felix seemed to have a special interest in transportation methods and gadgets. Though he was also interested in a few other things, such as my hazy memories of my personal life in whatever ‘London’ was, as well as my few, extremely vague memories of my best friend whose name started with ‘Mar.’ 

Sallia seemed far more interested in the stories I told of my original world’s warmaking and communication abilities. She asked for stories about cell phones and the strange metal tubes I remembered my old world used as weapons. She seemed more than a little dubious of my claims about how scary the metal tubes truly were, but she was also curious to know what a world looked like when swords were almost irrelevant in a war, so she asked me about weapons pretty often. I had no clue how the weapons of my old world would match up to the superhuman strength and superpowers of this world, but both of us found comparing the two interesting. 

From Sallia’s stories, I loved hearing about Sallia’s time as a noble, as well as her world that had fully embraced magic. Felix also seemed interested in this, which made me happy. From what Felix had told us of his world, all mages there were known to be universally evil monsters who attacked innocent people and slaughtered them for power. The church of his world had legions of soldiers who hunted down and fought Mages wherever they were found, and the gunpowder revolution and industrial revolution on his world had put evil magic firmly on the back foot as non-mages pushed spellcasters further and further into a corner. The fact that he was able to put aside his prejudice and accept Sallia, as well as embrace this world’s magic system, was a good sign for the future. It also meant that there wouldn’t be drama within our group over using magic, which let me heave a sigh of relief. Even if Felix didn’t exactly love magic, the way I did, he seemed to think of it as a useful and interesting tool, despite the prejudice he had been raised with in his old world.

The three of us also started to get a more definite idea of what memories each of us lost. Sallia had almost no memories missing, but after some probing, she did realize that when she was younger she had a pet cat that she had simply… forgot about, even though it had accompanied her for most of her life. Felix was missing memories of his parents and his first name, though he could remember his friends in perfect detail. I was missing almost ALL of my personal memories.

Despite that, it didn’t seem like we lost any skills. Knowledge of music, math, and science all seemed to be preserved much better, even though none of our memories of the subjects in question were perfect. The three of us had no clue why that was, but when I thought back to the memories I had lost, I couldn’t help but wish it was the other way around. I didn’t need to know how to get the derivative of velocity and use that to find the current acceleration of a tennis ball. I needed to know what my best friend and my mother’s face looked like.

At the end of the day, none of us knew why we forgot personal memories and remembered skills and mechanical memories, so we shelved the topic and resolved to keep an eye out for more information when we returned to the Market.

During our time together, Sallia’s rune formation advanced steadily. My mother, along with most of the other adults, seemed to eventually figure out that I was giving Sallia a fish stone or two on the side. Far from being angry at me, my mother seemed to approve of my ‘good nature and ability to look after my friends.’ Which was lucky, since I honestly felt she would have been justified if she got mad at me. I would have kept slipping Sallia fish stones either way, because Sallia’s mental health had seemed on the verge of collapse for a while, but I was glad my mother didn’t chew me out for it.

Though, she did say that since I was so determined to give away my fish stones, I needed to form my next rune with fewer resources. She didn’t hate my generosity, but she said I also needed to deal with the consequences.

Which was fair. I had quite a way to go before I could start working on my second rune anyway, because my body hadn’t fully adapted to my first rune yet, but Felix and I had been training in sensing mana in the air around us already. It was much harder than using fish cores to make runes, but I was already working on a solution for my future fish core shortage.

Sallia only took two weeks to form her first rune. I had taken nearly a month, and Sallia had accomplished her first rune formation in half the time, with fewer resources, and two grades less Absorption and three grades less in Willpower than I had access to. When I asked her how she had done this, the conversation had gone in circles for a while before Sallia learned that I lost around a third of each ‘spoonful’ of energy. Sallia, apparently, lost none. 

This brought back one of my earliest memories of the Market, which had mentioned that I was brought to the Market because I had high talent in one of the four Essences. Once I mentioned this, Sallia, Felix and I started wondering if the reason Sallia was so good at using absorption essence was because she specialized in Absorption essence. If so, it seemed like a huge shame that her Stats were so far below average in the important categories this time. With an average set of Stats, she might have gone above and beyond what Felix and I were able to do in this world. Sadly, even though the three of us thought Sallia’s talent in absorption essence was incredible, Sallia still couldn’t quite escape the problems of having low absorption essence in her body.

As our abilities grew, more time passed. Felix eventually formed his second rune, and got 200 Achievement as a reward for doing so. He reported that, like the first rune, the second rune raised all of his physical stats by 1 grade. Sallia and I worked on stabilizing our first runes, and prepared for the day we would eventually make our second runes.

One day, Olav, the fisherman that owned the fishing boat my father worked on, stopped by while we were relaxing and playing in the sand on the beach. I had only met Olav a few times, but he stuck out very prominently in my memories. Mostly because he was one of the few people who didn’t have blonde hair in the village. His hair was turning gray, a rare sign of old age in a village where people didn’t usually live past fifty, but it was also easy to see that unlike the other islanders his hair had previously been brown. This, along with his grizzled beard and his accent, made me often curious about where he had come from, and why he was so different from the other villagers. 

“The three of ya are doin’ great with yer runes!” Olav said with his booming voice, giving us a grin. “Miria, yer mama and papa were sayin’ that the Storm season’s rollin’ around. Normally, ya’d need to go back home, but since yer pretty mentally resilient and ya’ve never seen it before, do you wanna watch instead? I was talkin’ it over with them, and I convinced ‘em that watching’ it instead might do ya some good. It sharpens the mind, and it’s good trainin’! The clouds are gatherin’ and the season’s right, so it’ll start soon! Felix and Aria (Sallia), yer parents are comin’ along too. Do ya wanna watch too?”

I thought about it for a moment, before I turned to Felix and Sallia.

“Thoughts?”

“I’m interested,” said Felix, shrugging. “I don’t feel much pull from the Call of the Ocean if I’m careful. If my mother thinks I can safely watch the storm season, I don’t mind giving it a try, especially if it has some sort of beneficial effect.”

Sallia frowned, and shuffled nervously. “Mister Olav, is that… really a good idea for me?”

Olav actually frowned, seriously thinking the question over. “Yer a little younger and yer Willpower has never been great, but yer ma and pa said that as long as ya don’t let go of their hand you’re allowed ta watch. I dunno if it’s a great idea but…” he shrugged. “They’re yer parents, not me. If ya don’t wanna join, I think they’d accept it if ya said no, but it’s yer choice, and if ya manage ta watch, ya might be able to fix a bit of yer weak mental resilience.” He gave me and Sallia a grin. “And the storms are a sight to see, if ya can manage to watch ‘em. It’s yer choice though.” 

”How effective is it? At strengthening your Willpower, I mean? Is it really effective?”

Olav laughed. “That got yer attention dinnit, it, little lady? I know that a lot of people who witness the Storms start ta get a little tougher in the head, but it ain’t a miracle trainin’ method. Ya gotta persist with it, and the effects won’t totally solve yer problem. But it’ll help, so it’s still a good idea fer ya if ya can manage. Ya’ve always been a little… erm… scatterbrained,” said Olav, trying to keep a note of awkwardness out of his voice. 

Sallia frowned, before she nodded to herself. “I want to do it. If it’ll help…” Sallia trailed off, but I had a good guess what she was thinking. In this life, Sallia’s greatest hindrance was always her low Willpower and her low Absorption Stat. If there was a way to boost that Stat, even by a little bit, it made perfect sense that Sallia would be interested in it.

“All right, come along then.” The three of us followed behind Olav. A few minutes later we all stood next to our parents, and began moving a bit away from the villages so that the huts wouldn’t block our view. The adults shuffled around, moving closer to their children.

Sallia’s father gave Sallia a cautious look, before he moved much closer to Sallia and grabbed her hand. Felix’s mother simply gave him a warm, approving smile with the half of her face that moved properly, before she sat down in the sand and patted the sand next to her. Felix sat down in the spot as the two of them relaxed.

My father held tightly on to my mother with one hand and made me hold his hand with the other. My mother also closed her eyes, covering them with her free hand while peeking out from between her fingers occasionally. Time passed as the clouds gathered.

I felt a vague sense of pressure. The mana that I was slowly learning to sense started to gather in the air around the ocean. 

Before I had more time to think and observe, the clouds and mana started to warp together, and with a boom, the storms started. Instantly, the world transitioned from calm to absolute mayhem. Far away from the island, in the sea, the heavy gray clouds burst, and rain began pouring down in sheets, seeking to obscure the earth and wash away the islands. Lightning crackled above the surface of the water, coming down in sheets as it blasted the surface of the waves like a curtain of light dancing in unseen winds. The ocean itself rose up to meet the lightning, forming a towering vortex of water that slowly reached towards the heavens like an angry god clawing its way out of the ocean. 

In the center of the emerging pillar of water, a giant, glowing green-white light seemed to shine, like a star had fallen into the ocean. It gave the entire sight an eerie, ethereal glow. In the distance, I could see the water closer to the village began to drain away, revealing small clusters of pearls, all reflecting the sickly glow of the ocean.

The water surrounding the vortex began to wobble and shake like a bowl of jello, jiggling back and forth. I could vaguely see some of the giant fish, along with other, more massive sea creatures I couldn’t identify, swirling around in the chaotic and choppy towers of water. They looked like tiny ants when compared to the rising pillar of water, pitiful creatures swept up in a spectacle beyond mortal imagination.

The pillar of water reached its pinnacle, touching the clouds. There was a massive boom, and I shuddered as I felt the soundwave crash through the world around me. The eerie white-green glowing orb in the ocean exploded like a firework, causing the world and the mana in the air to shudder. Then, like a lamp being thrown into the ocean, the storm abruptly stopped.

The pillar of water collapsed. The choppy gelatin-like waves regained their fluidity and fell back into the ocean. The fish and other sea monsters were violently thrown in random directions, most of them retreating back into the ocean’s depths. Near the shores of our village, I could see various people with runes already working to quell the tsunami of water before it crushed the village, stilling and calming the ocean before it swept away our homes.

“Ahahahaha!” Olav laughed, his booming voice echoing through the group. “That’s what I call a storm, eh!” His laughter continued echoing across the beach as he watched the massive fish flop and jerk around in the distance.

Most of the other adults with stronger Willpower also laughed as they watched the ocean return to normal, the unnatural waves disappearing as quickly as they had first appeared. 

Mother uncovered her eyes. I could see a sort of hazy, glazed over longing in her gaze as she stared at the ocean. I hadn’t noticed any of the other adults visibly struggling as much as my mother did, affirming my suspicion that my mother had unusually low Willpower.

Sallia’s mother was tightly holding on to Sallia, while Sallia herself twitched and gazed at the water with a glazed expression. Longing was evident in her gaze as she twisted and struggled to walk towards the water. I had little doubt that if her mother hadn’t been restraining her, Sallia would have charged directly into the ocean and disappeared forever.

Felix’s mother didn’t even hold his hand throughout the whole thing, apparently trusting him enough to avoid doing so. She kept a close eye on him, but apparently she considered that enough. Felix looked… unfocused, but in much better shape than Sallia. He would be fine in a few minutes.

Even among the adults, I was one of the best off in the group. I felt the usual tug of the ocean and the hazy formless desire to take a little swim in the waves. However, it was easy for me to suppress it. Now that I knew what the Call of the Ocean felt like, I had little difficulty identifying it and squashing it before it broke my will.

A few minutes passed as everyone got their marbles back together. Sallia was also starting to visibly recover, twitching less as she slowly regained her awareness of her surroundings. My mother and Felix also slowly returned to normal.

Quietly, my mother and father led me away from the beach, and Sallia’s parents and Felix’s mother also started to lead them away. The three of us would talk about our gains when we next met. However, for now our parents seemed eager to get us out of the area so that we could get rid of any lingering mental aftereffects from the Storms. 

However, after seeing the incredible mixture of magical and physical chaos caused by the Storm, I had a very different focus than before. I realized that I had a new idea, both for a way to farm huge amounts of Achievement and a method of sating my curiosity in this world.

Someday, I wanted to be able to see what the stormy depths of the ocean looked like. The magnificent sight of the storms, and the danger accompanying it, were both fascinating for me. This wasn’t the Call of the Ocean luring me into the depths of the waves. Now that I knew what the Ocean’s effect on people was, I could tell when I had an unnatural urge to take a dip into the dark waters and never return. This desire was different. It stemmed purely from myself. 

The ocean and the storms here were simply incredibly odd, and after having seen a storm, I was fascinated by the raw, unbridled fury of a magically empowered mother nature wreaking havoc on the world. If I managed to do so, I would probably get massive amounts of Achievement, and I would also learn more about this world than I might ever be able to if I only pursued ‘normal’ goals in this place, so exploring the Ocean once I got older and stronger would work both as a means of preparing for our eventual return to the Market, and as a means of learning more.

I wanted to find a way to explore the Ocean safely, without losing my mind in the process, and see what the creatures I couldn’t see clearly were. I wanted to see what the strange, glowing orb in the center of the storm had been. I wanted to see what was going on in this place. It was a small dream, and it would be insanely hard. The sea creatures that lived beneath the waves seemed terrifying, but after I saw the raw sight of nature’s fury in this world, I felt ensnared in it. I wanted to know what beneath the waves was actually so dangerous that almost nobody returned from the depths. It wasn’t as important to my survival as training my magic and preparing for our eventual return to the Market, but I had a goal for this life now. 

I would explore the ocean, learn why the waters of this world were so unique, and transform that into the power I needed to keep my friends safe. I would need to wait many years before I could turn this hope into a reality, since I was far too young to do things on my own right now, but I was determined to see my idea through once I was older and stronger.

 

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