Chapter 42:

  Wineskins

  I woke the next morning as light once again invited itself into the room through the large circular window overhead. My muscles ached uncomfortably, and a faint sharp pain still made itself known where my head had struck the rock after yesterday’s explosion.

  In a way, it was convenient to have an injury to treat, as I was genuinely curious to see just how much the Mend Wounds had improved from a single rank increase.

  As I turned my focus inward, I was relieved to find that my reservoir of potential had once again refilled while I slept. Potential stirred within the depths of my being as I called it forward in accordance with my intent.

  My will took hold of a figurative handful of potential from my reservoir, and I repeated the motion I had practiced the day before. I carefully guided its warmth from my center, then through my aching limbs, and did my best to stretch that small portion as far as I could before applying it to the wound on the back of my head.

  Gradually, the intense pain that ached through my bones began to recede along as my skill went to work in my body.

  I was delighted to find that not only was moving the potential easier than before, but even this small amount felt… hotter, somehow. It was like pulling out a still glowing ember from a fire rather than just a warm black coal. The analogy wasn’t perfect, but the difference was clear, the skill seemed to hold its heat longer before dissipating.

  After tending to my wounds, I moved to my armoire and picked out my clothes for the day. I chose my usual brown pants and dark boots, and paired them with the dark green shirt Ariel had bought for me just the other day.

  A warmth filled me as I thought about her and the rest of the Claybrooks. In that moment, I decided that today would be the day I would go back to visit with them.

  However, before that, I needed to write my letter to Wheat Hollow, check on Blue and Mittens, and then, if the Adventurers Guild hadn’t already departed, accompany them on their trip back to Salt Brine.

  With my plans set for the day, I made my way downstairs, and treated myself to a simple breakfast. Then I grabbed a handful of carrots before heading outside to greet Blue.

  Upon, opening the doors to the stable I fed him carrots, and brushed his coat as he happily ate my offering. I also told him about my plans to visit to the Claybrooks, but he merely snatched the few remaining carrots from my hand and all but frolicked off toward the field of flowers, along with his small companion who darted along at his side.

  Murder Mittens didn’t even bother to hiss at me today, and even rubbed herself against my leg as she departed the stables with Blue.

  I watched the two chase after one another for several minutes, and I noted that Blue looked younger now than I had seen him in years, and I was happy he was so at peace with his new home.

  Eventually, I began to make my way around the hill toward the workshop out back. The main house had yielded nothing in my search for writing materials, so this felt like the only place left to look before having to spend money on new supplies in town.

  The door creaked softly as I stepped inside, and the runelamps flickered to life, bathing the room in a gentle glow and revealing the cluttered surface of the desk. I eased myself into the chair, carefully sliding the empty cores aside before opening the drawer. Inside, I found exactly what I’d hoped for: parchment, ink, and a quill.

  I drew them out and arranged them carefully on the desk. After a steadying breath, my hands began to move, setting my thoughts to parchment.

  At first, I wasn’t even sure what I wanted to say to my family back in Wheat Hollow. Writing to Seth came easily enough. I told him about the excitement of my travels and the places I’d seen, but knowing my mother would read every word, I carefully spared the details of any true life or death situations. There was no sense in giving her more reasons to worry than she likely already had.

  I wrote about the Claybrooks, the Duke, and the little I’d seen of Salt Brine, but most of all I lingered on the beauty of the valley itself. When I finally began describing my home, I couldn’t help but smile, imagining Seth’s envy at the completely unheard-of luxury of indoor toiletry.

  At the end, I added a few personal lines for each of them. I told Seth how proud I was of him, how much I missed him, and that if he ever came to visit, he would get along famously with Neil. As they shared the same kind of restless, infectious energy.

  To my mother, I offered my love and gently urged her not to worry too much about me. I assured her that I was doing well and promised I would visit next summer, for Neil’s Choosing Day.

  My quill hovered over the page when it came time to address my father. I hesitated, unsure what I could possibly say to the man who had cast me aside the moment I failed to follow the path he had envisioned for me. After a moment’s thought, I settled on the simplest truth I could manage and wrote only of Blue.

  The stubborn ass is enjoying his retirement.

  After reading over the letter a few times, I folded it and sealed it shut, using the candle and wax tucked away in the drawer. I didn’t have a seal of my own, so I pressed a small core from the table into the hot wax. Then, I used the tip of my quill to carve a simple design into the seal: a harvester’s sickle.

  With everything I’d set out to do at home finally finished, I began the short trek toward the village. I couldn’t help but smile as I made my way around the picturesque lake. It was a beautiful day. The sun shone warmly overhead, a few wandering clouds drifted lazily across the sky, and a gentle breeze off the water gently pushed my steps forward.

  Before long, I reached the village and walked purposefully toward its center, where the great mound shaped building rose above the surrounding homes. In several doorways, elderly folk sat in comfortable chairs, chatting softly over steaming cups of tea, their laughter and quiet conversation pausing only long enough to offer a friendly good morning as I passed by.

  After passing one such home, I stopped in my tracks as I recognized one of the men sitting outside, sharing a cup of tea with his wife.

  “Oye, Sam, good to see you this morning,” Paul called out, as he stood up from his chair to shake my hand. He looked me over quizzically, and proceeded to shake his head. “How is it you don’t look like you went through hell yesterday?”

  “Well, being this handsome has its perks I guess,” I said with a smile, and then cut my eye towards his wife in an attempt to remind him that he had not yet introduced her to me.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Paul catching my meaning, immediately turned to introduce me.

  “My love, this is Sam Garner, the man I was telling you about yesterday. You have him to blame for why you’re still stuck with me.”

  Paul’s wife rose from her chair and took my hand in a firm, warm grip as she greeted me.

  “It’s nice to meet you, Sam. I’m Eiren,” she said with a small smile. “Thank you for keeping an eye on my husband. Make sure he doesn’t do anything too reckless in the future. We have a little one on the way, after all.”

  She rested a hand on the slight curve of her belly as she spoke, and I patted Paul on the arm in congratulations. The moment my hand made contact, he winced, though he tried to hide it just as quickly.

  “Sweetheart, you need to go see Ms. Clover and get a tonic for that… on second thought, nevermind, it’s best if I go myself,” Elsbeth said, as a serious look crossed her face.

  “No need,” I replied. “I’ll patch him up well enough. Just sit and relax for a moment.”

  Despite Paul’s protests, I had him remove his tunic so I could get a better look at the arm that had been causing him pain. A deep, dark bruise spread across his bicep and shoulder, the skin mottled purple and blue from the swelling. I frowned slightly, as I was unsure what could have caused damage like that.

  “What is this bruise from?” I asked, with rising concern. “I don’t remember seeing you get hit there yesterday. Was it from when you passed out under that beast’s aura?”

  A flicker of alarm crossed Paul’s face as he looked at me with pleading eyes. My gaze drifted to his wife, who was now glaring at him. It seemed Paul had left a few details out of his account of yesterday, and I had just thrown him cleanly under the wagon.

  “Well… actually,” Paul said, wincing, “it was from when you gave Chris and I that boost of power. It felt incredible at the time, but afterward I was in so much pain my wife had to help me bathe last night. I…” He coughed. “Actually, never mind. Leave the bruise. It’s fine.”

  Paul’s wife reflexively swatted his arm at the joke, then immediately apologized as another spasm of pain shot through him.

  I took a moment to mull over what he’d said. Yesterday, I had empowered both him and Chris with Power Boost, but in the heat of the moment I must have pushed more power into them than their bodies could safely handle. If that was the case, then the bruise wasn’t from an external blow at all. It was likely the result of his muscles tearing themselves apart as they struggled to keep pace with the amplifying force of my skill.

  A shiver ran through me. Until now, I had been healing, boosting, and amplifying far too carelessly, and I felt fortunate that no serious side effects had appeared in the others I’d treated. It was becoming clear that if I continued using my skills without proper restraint or practice, I could end up seriously harming someone by applying potential to them incorrectly.

  My thoughts drifted back to when I had boosted Halius. Had he experienced any backlash from it? I didn’t think so. The first time we fought the gnolls, I had poured potential into him without restraint, and after only a few minutes of rest he had been back in fighting shape.

  So maybe, higher attributes had something to do with? I had a sneaking suspicion based on how I had felt when I had recieved Yahm’s blessing just the other day. My body felt like it was going to pop from the increase of strength, and I hadn’t yet understood why that was.

  “Paul, can you tell me exactly how it felt when I applied that boost to you yesterday?”

  He eased himself back into his chair and closed his eyes for a moment, sifting through the memory of the battle.

  “Well, at first my blood ran hot,” he said slowly, “like when you work up a hard sweat. The rush of strength that followed was incredible. But I could feel a steady stream of potential coming from you, and the longer you kept your hand on me, the more intense it became. The pressure built until I felt like I was about to burst.”

  He opened his eyes and gave a small, rueful smile.

  “So I kept driving my spear forward, trying to burn off as much of that power as I could. I don’t blame you, by the way. It was a scary moment for someone new to battle like that. Hell,” he admitted quietly, “I was scared too, and I was wearing armor.”

  I nodded as I digested that information. It sounded remarkably similar to how my Amplify Core skill worked. Once a certain threshold was crossed, excess potential didn’t simply bleed away. Instead, it overwhelmed the container until it began to tear itself apart.

  So… what determined the strength of the container?

  My thoughts immediately returned to Yahm’s Blessing. It hadn’t just granted me strength. It had also bolstered my fortitude, which was currently my highest attribute. Could that be the answer? Did fortitude, in this context, make our bodies, the containers, more resilient to sudden or extreme shifts in internal potential?

  The idea weighed heavily in my mind. It was unsettling in its implications, but it fit far too well to ignore.

  I chose to share my thoughts with Paul, and apologized for my lack of understanding and the damage he had recieved to his arm. He thought about what I had said for a moment and then added the finally pieces of the puzzle that I was missing.

  “Sam… you don’t seem weak by any means, growing up on a farm and all, but I doubt you’ve spent any time building up strength through proper training, am I right about that?

  I nodded. Aside from manual labor, I hadn’t gone out of my way to train my body in any meaningful capacity. Truth be told, I wasn’t even sure where to start when it came to proper training.

  Paul nodded sagely as he leaned back in his chair.

  “Sam, if you don’t train your body alongside your gains on the Path, your skills can end up harming you through their application. I’ve heard stories about it, and the results aren’t pretty. This injury to my arm is a small example of what can happen.”

  He took a sip of his tea before continuing.

  “Those numbers on our stats aren’t necessarily how strong we are. They’re a measure of applied internal force, similar to… I don’t know, kind of like wineskins. You’re familiar with wineskins, right?”

  I nodded, in fact, that had been the same way I had understood pressure inside of cores.

  “Well, when you ferment wine, you have to leave room for it to expand. If you don’t, the pressure builds until the skin pops and you lose all the contents inside. So, think of your stats as the wine fermenting, and your body as the skin. When you apply a skill, espeicially ones like that boost of yours, you’re increasing the pressure inside the container. And every time you level up, you’re essentially adding more wine to the skin. You can imagine what happens if there’s no room left inside.”

  Paul, as if to emphasize his point, spread his hands apart and made a popping sound. Before I could respond, he continued.

  “We have a responsibility to train our bodies to bear that strain when we’re pushed to the limit. That rush of blood through your body needs a vessel strong enough to accommodate it… or you’d better have enough fortitude to compensate. Make no mistake, Martial domains more than any other push hard against the vessel. Their abilities are built around force, speed, and impact. If there’s weakness anywhere, that pressure will find it, and the results aren’t always as tame as my arm here. Surely you know this? The priests harp on it constantly whenever we level up and progress our skills.”

  “Oh, yeah. Yeah, of course,” I said quickly, as I did not want to reveal that I was capable of leveling without the aid of the church. “Guess my head was hurt worse than I thought. It is good to get a refresher though.”

  As I digested everything Paul had said, a quiet realization settled over me. Much of the pain I’d been feeling, and many of the gains I’d received from Yahm, were one and the same.

  My body, or rather, my wineskin, had been taking on more and more pressure with every step forward along the Path. If not for the boost to my fortitude, which somehow helped hold everything together, my container… me… might have torn itself apart without warning.

  “Sam, are you ok?” Eiren asked, as worry spread across her face. “Are you feeling well, you look white as a ghost.”

  “No… no, I’m fine,” I said, trying to play off my rising panic, “Now, let me get a look at that arm and get you patched up. If you’re this bad off, I might need to go check on Chris as well.”

  Paul grimaced at the suggestion, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he shifted slightly in his chair, bracing himself as I rested my hand against the bruised flesh and began to apply Mend Wounds in slow, measured pulses. I was as controlled as I could possibly be, taking my time as I guided the potential through his body, treating it with the same caution and deliberation I had practiced on myself.

  “Chris stopped by this morning,” Paul said as I worked. “Bastard was already back on patrol.”

  A huff of breath escaped him, half amusement, half resignation. “Made sure to give me a hard time about it too. Still… I can’t say I mind the extra time with my wife.”

  I smiled at that, and his wife tightened her grip around his hand, her thumb tracing small, reassuring circles against his skin.

  “Well,” I said with a sneaky smile as I healed the last of the bruises from his arm, “I’ll patch you up, but we don’t have to make a fuss about it. Enjoy the time extra time while you have it.”

  Paul rolled his shoulder experimentally, unconsciously bracing for pain that never came. He let out a quiet breath of relief, then, with his newly healed arm, clasped my shoulder in thanks.

  “You’re a good one, Sam,” he said with genuine warmth. “I’m glad you’re here in the valley.”