Hunted|Haunted - Chapter 20 - Nex finally gets it

You’ve got used to Tove, right? A pretty chill doe. Well, Neven and Nex didn’t think so, but we aren’t asking two anxiety-ridden junkies for a sound judgement. At least not at this point.

A pretty chill doe. Sort of has a working head on her shoulders. With each “wrong” pine, Cogs grew closer to altering his mental description.

— For fuck’s sake, they’re all the same!

— No the fuck they aren’t!

— This is literally a pine forest, all pines are pines here!

— That was an 80-year-old sylvestris pine with rootrot, and a horrible case at that. They are not effin same.

 

The rest just groaned. They could no longer see or smell the city. At this rate, they might as well just walk back. Yet Tove persisted.

 

— How could you hide this from me?

— That trees aren’t the same? Grow eyes.

— That you’re a nerd!

 

The desecrated twisted around in a manner, no vertebra should. This raw display of derangement made Cogs dread the fact that he, as well, was a vertebra.

— That’s a brave statement here, holey-boy, and by hashies, do I not recommend you proceed with it. Better find me a rootrot.

— Do I look like a boar to you? Do I look like I dig for roots on a regular basis?

 

The living have given up trying to catch up after the crazed antler-beast and decided to camp in a clearing. Tove will likely be excited to show whatever this mysterious “roo-trot” is, her pronunciation certainly didn’t make it easy to understand, whenever she finds it, and will return after them.

 

— Bad rootrot is seen on all parts of the tree, have eyes.

— In what world is ROOTrot visible on anything else?!

What nice weather. Birds singing, some blooming weed making Nex sneeze every other minute, village dude fighting a deer. Things seemed a little too normal, and the suspicious lack of hedgehogs did not help at all, so Nex decided to distract himself with those garbage rat god trading cards Harvey used.

First, he saw a system to them. Cards contained various objects and were signed with a bunch of adjectives and classifications. But then the cards stopped having words on them, instead having icons and symbols. Okay, makes sense, I guess that counts as a description. Halfway through the deck, the cards stopped having pictures on them, the icons instead describing vague splashes of colour.

— What are those?

— Spells. If you stick your hand into a card and cast, the spell stays inside. If you cast halfway out the card, the card gets enchanted.

— Isn’t that kinda the same thing?

— Nuh-uh, enchanted cards do the thing on their own. With the other ones, you have to shake it out, and if you’re out, the spell doesn’t work.

— Why not make all cards enchanted, then?

— Oh, I just recently figured that that’s a thing that’s possible. It didn’t come with directions, most stuffs on flea markets don’t. But, I don’t think a paper big enough for that list has been invented yet. The damn thing might as well have a mind of its own. You know why no one uses things like that? It won’t let me pick cards. If I want it to work, I have to pick a random card and hope I can figure out how it is useful. And then some things work weird with cards

— There’s weirder?

— If I put a 52-deck of playing cards in, it will turn into more blank cards. If I put a 36-card deck in, nothing happens. If I put collecting cards in, there’s a 50/50 chance that either the card turns the collecting card into an object on it, or just… starts looking like a blank collecting card. Or maybe the chance is not 50/50, but I don’t know why it happens, so I assumed.

— So, it’s a fucked up weird stack of magic paper that you can’t actually control, and you’re using it because…?

— Oh, it’s just really cheap to use, since the thing is a magic… uh… I’ve been calling it Dave. I don’t have a lot of mana to go off of to begin with, so I don’t have much choice. I mean, I constantly have to think about keeping it high, or I wouldn’t be able to fly anywhere. Or do much.

— Y’all keep talking about magic amounts, and honestly, it makes no fucking sense to me

— How do you want it explained?

— What?

— I'm the kid's go-to nanny, I can explain anything I know in any way.

…

— No ideas?

— I have a hard time believing you're the go-to nanny.

— Take it to the boss, then.

…

— Can you explain all that in computer?

— Well, I, for one, never touched one, but I can try.

The following explanation was very vaguely connected to computers and sounded more like someone attempting sci-fi-sounding nonsense. Nevertheless, Nex understood a couple of things:

Magic was pretty close to electricity in how it behaved.

Except for parts where it behaved like radiation.

Witches are more like cars, because they need food to make magic.

Spellcasters who get mana from somewhere else are more like household appliances, because they need something else to make raw energy into something they can absorb and use.

Familiars stabilise magic charge and lower the chance of a spell failing.

Familiars are also just pets with extra consciousness.

Except for Bubba, who was more or less a zookeeper for Harvey.

Some things raise mana, and others decrease. Mushrooms, generally, raise it, and tobacco lowers it. Guessing, that’s why Neven smokes like a chimney?

Crystal things are expensive to use.

Metal things are preferred for casting.

If you have big hands, you can cast empty-handed (Harvey couldn’t explain why that is).

Harvey is a genetic fuck-up, whose inner battery stayed the way it was when he was a child.

Neven and Krsto are even bigger fuck-ups, who make more than they can use anywhere outside an active battlefield.

Humans apparently make magic, too?

Harvey cannot, for the love of gods, say two sentences in a row that make sense when combined.

Enchanted things are cheap to use, but they need to be recharged from time to time

Magic just sometimes exists in places. Harvey tried really hard to explain why, but other than that it has something to do with mushrooms and water, Nex didn’t understand much.

Water makes magic disappear.

— Wait, aren’t y’all swamp witches?

— Aquatic. — Neven corrected.

— I don’t see a difference.

— You better.

— Well, Grobars and Lowac are, but most Tragač are forest witches. They make enough to make up for water removing magic, I don’t.

— Uhh….

— Harvey thinks you know that a “house” usually has more than one family in it.

— You know what? Fuck it. I like collecting info, but today I say I know enough. I don’t want to find out more about your weird family wreaths.

 

Eventually, Cogs came by to take them to the “correct” tree, mumbling under his breath angrily about “where he’d seen those trees” and a few times trying and successfully kicking random small pebbles lying around. Whether the tree really was similar to the one on the other side of the globe was disputed, and not worth it at all. Tove’s copy of the symbols was spot on, though.

 

Upon stabbing the tree, Nex was hit with near complete darkness, a flash of cold air and… water.

He was now sinking in a swamp. Brilliant.

— How fucked up is fucked up?

— Not much, I’m pretty sure this is Woodmur or somewhere near.

— Why?

— Be-

— Don’t you dare bring fucking trees into this again.

— … No, it’s because that’s my sister way over there.

— Wait what?