Chapter 54 – Into The Glade

Chapter 54 – Into The Glade

After finishing their late afternoon lunch, Emily and most of the expedition members relax on the grass staring into the distance. The group have varying expressions while gazing at what most likely amounts to their imminent grave. Most of the vassal mages seem nervous, almost certain they will be the coming collateral damage, whereas the nobles hold an air of confidence and anticipation, clearly excited about the potential resources that await them.

Emily herself has a mixture of excitement and intense curiosity plastered across her face, looking forward to fighting beasts and discovering the secrets of the mysterious forest. Glancing to her side, she sees Ivor staring out into the distance with a look of grim determination and acceptance.

“What’s wrong, big guy? I didn’t think you’d be so worried. Haven’t you been into The Glade a few times before?”

“I have,” he signs his agreement, shifting uncomfortably and refusing to make eye contact. “But, the groups I came with were only here to gather some of the more common herbs and kill small beasts. We stayed around the outer edges and certainly never tried looking for an entrance to The Crystal Waters.”

“Ah, I see.” Emily nods, falling into silent contemplation for a few moments.

I should have realised from Oscar saying that his family didn’t have enough data to design a training room for The Waters’ environment, that expeditions this deep are uncommon. I could rewind and get Ivor out before we even set off this morning...

“Hey,” Emily says softly, pulling Ivor’s gaze to her before signing a question. “You sure you want to come? It’s not too late to go back you know.”

He immediately shakes his head, fixing Emily with a stare far more passionate than she has ever seen from the shy boy before.

“I’m nervous because it’s deeper than I’ve gone before, but I want a chance to see The Waters and discover new ingredients!” he signs with certainty.

Emily smiles at his drive for discovery.

“As long as you’re sure. Also, I meant what I said last night. We’re both getting through this alive, no matter what. Just make sure you have my back.”

Not like I really need it.

Oscar approaches as they chat, dropping down onto the floor beside them. They both greet him, and he responds cheerfully before his face falls into a serious expression as he looks at Emily.

“I just wanted to check one last time, are you sure you’re alright heading the group?” he asks.

“Yeah. What’s with the sudden concern?” she responds with a raised brow.

“I just wanted to make sure before we go in. I do have a conscience, you know. I feel a little bad making such a young mage stand in front of me.”

“Sheesh, I can’t be that much younger than you guys. How old even are you?”

“I’m twenty-five,” he answers with a smile, standing up and patting Emily on the shoulder. “None of the other combatants are below twenty.”

Emily is surprised by his words, looking over to Ivor who’s grinning at her.

“And here I thought you were the old one.”

“Told you twenty is young,” he signs back with glee.

“Right, everyone into formation!” Oscar shouts, moving to stand between the group and The Glade.

Emily raises her fist towards Ivor. He grins and bumps it, nodding confidently, before they both stand up.

“Well, talk to you later,” Emily casually says while walking forward to join Oscar.

She wordlessly settles into place, looking back over the quick-moving mages behind her. The four luggage carriers in the middle all have large fabric bags double their size on their backs, all traced with lightly glowing, purple runes.

Are those spatial bags? They have to be: we’re meant to have tents after all.

After everyone has reached their position, Oscar gives Emily a small nod before shouting: “Move out!”

They all start moving as one, trekking out into the open field as the cars start their engines and begin driving back to Chroni. As they reach the border of The Glade, Oscar taps Emily and Dante’s shoulders before raising a hand silently and signalling for a scan. Everyone halts their steps, turning their focus to Ivor standing with his eyes shut. Emily and Dante are the only exceptions, both keeping their eyes ahead, Emily’s glowing a pale orange.

Emily’s visual check of the forest floor produces the same result as Ivor’s, both finding nothing. However, her scan of the canopies looming above reveals half a dozen small birds watching their approach. Gesturing to Oscar to wait for a moment, Emily summons a small iron blade. Taking it firmly between her fingers, she pulls her arm back before whipping it forward, sending the blade directly into the chest of one of the birds.

As the dead bird falls limply to the ground, the others take off in alarm, flying further along the periphery of The Glade.

Whoops, I guess none of them are dangerous.

***

Six hours later, Emily’s meditation is broken by a mana signature approaching the entrance to her tent. The flap is pushed aside as Enzo peeks his head in.

“Time to break camp,” he informs her before ducking back out.

Emily quickly follows him, grabbing the bundle of tongues from the floor as she goes and heading towards the small gathering of people at the centre of the tightly packed tents.

Three hours left till core one wakes up. I’ll have to be slightly more on guard for a bit.

Emily sits down next to Oscar, silently watching the luggage carriers unloading food from their packs and handing it to Dante and the other fire mages for heating. After a few minutes of waiting for her turn to eat, Emily’s curiosity gets the better of her, so she absentmindedly pulls up the system windows of the carriers’ bags.

̄ ̄ ̄ ̄ ̄

[Temporary Bag of Holding]

[Rank:] D

[Description:] A bag with a temporary spatial expansion array installed.

[Effect:] Holds a freely accessible, five-metre cubed pocket dimension.

_____

Her brow raises in surprise as she reads the description.

“How do those bags hold so much? I thought low-grade spatial storages were only a metre or so,” she asks Oscar, pointedly glancing towards his necklace as she does.

“You’re thinking of permanent holder-locked storage. There are a few differences, one is that personal dimensional items like my necklace can be accessed freely by the holder, summoning items from within them to their hands with just a thought. Whereas items like those bags are bound to a specific opening on the object. Anyone can access their contents if they have access to the opening. The second major difference is permanent or temporary. Both my necklace and each of those bags used one lesser space crystal each to make, but those bags will be out of energy in a month, whereas my necklace will last forever.”

“I see, and the parts of the enchantment used for summoning items from the void will use more mana too,” Emily mutters.

“Exactly!”

“What are you going to do if the bags run out of mana before the end of the expedition? Isn’t there a chance we’re here for longer than a month?”

“In that case we have Callum to help refill them until we get back,” Oscar answers calmly, gesturing to the mage in question eating on the other side of the group. “Or, who knows, maybe by the time that happens you’ll suddenly tell us you’re a space mage as well!”

Oscar laughs at his joke while accepting a portion of porridge from Cian. Considering her progress in her meditation last night, a small grin forms on Emily’s face.

Maybe I will.

Announcement

I've written a little statement to address some issues with earlier chapters which I will eventually be rewriting:

Spoiler

Having now received quite a few comments on how I wrote chapters 10 and 11, in which Herber dies, I thought I should offer a response.

The main criticism I’ve received is that Emily gives up too easily. A number of readers have expressed the belief that she should have kept going, using her time-travelling ability to keep resetting until she’d worked out a way to save her father’s life.

There are a number of reasons why it was never possible to save Herber, and why it isn’t plausible for Emily to have tried harder, but I realise that those reasons aren’t clear enough in the text. So, here’s why...

When Emily first created The Clock and awakened, she was overwhelmed. She may be very smart, and quite mentally mature for her age, but she is still only fifteen. In a very short time period, she discovered that magic, time-travel, and galaxy-spanning civilisations were all real. On top of that, she repeatedly witnessed the traumatising death of a loved one, and was faced with an enemy that seemed unbeatable, having watched them come back from near death.

Faced with all this, she didn’t respond rationally. She became emotionally shut-down and impulsive, ending the looping quickly. She didn’t have the resilience, nor the mental capacity, to calmly problem-solve the situation. Once she made her decision, with Herber’s blessing, she suppressed her feelings and distracted herself with magic and mechanics, all with a view to one day exacting her revenge on her powerful enemy.

I realise this wasn’t clear enough, and I am planning to rewrite some of my earlier sections to ensure that the emotional impact and distress is properly described, so that the choices Emily makes are more believable. However, I work full-time and write as a hobby, so I may not find time to do that for a while, as I’m focussed on progressing the story at the moment (and there’s a long way to go).

However, I do want to explain that Emily’s decision was not a mistake on my part. When I do my rewrites, I won’t change the outcome. Herber can’t survive and Emily can’t escape. I’ve worked through every possible scenario that is plausible, given Emily’s knowledge at the time (including anything she could extract from people close enough to reach before each loop ends), and escaping with Herber and Anna alive is impossible. On top of the lack of supplies in the shop to make proper weapons, she has hard caps on the abilities she could develop in such a short time. Importantly, she can’t improve her cultivation whilst in frozen time.

The events around Herber’s death are important to Emily’s character development. When she eventually reflects on this properly, the fact that she acted on emotion instead of logic will be a huge source of regret to her. And she will reflect on it: the event may have passed, but the emotional processing will take a while. A large part of the motif I’m building around Emily is that she makes mistakes, processes them, and tries never to repeat them. Whether that’s being overwhelmed, letting anger control her, or even becoming a victim of her own arrogance, Emily will repeatedly make mistakes that lead to long-lasting consequences that she has to live with, but she will come out of it stronger.

Herber’s death was completely inevitable from the moment Emily awakened. But that is a fact Emily won’t be able to confirm for a very, very long time.

As a first-time writer, I’ve been both grateful and excited by the number of people who are enjoying Emily’s story. I am learning as I go along, but, like Emily, will do my best not to make the same mistake twice.

[collapse]