Back to Yonder for Publication, page 14
Lina looked at me with a bit of a scowl. “I meant for you to occupy him somewhere else—not add a second toddler for me to watch.”
Her admonishment was playful, so I didn’t take it too hard. Instead, I pinched her fluffy tail and then picked up Robbie as he started to regain his balance. “Wanna ride Rock?” I asked my son.
Robbie squealed in delight. I hadn’t yet allowed him to ride the elemental horse by himself, but he still delighted in the times I’d hold him in my lap as I rode my companion. Apparently that was enough for Rock, because I felt the ground under my feet swell. He headed for the nearest open space. It seems he enjoyed carrying me and Robbie around, so it was a win-win.
On the far side of the tent, I leaped onto Rock’s back and Robbie squealed again. Everything delighted him, and it was a joy to make him laugh. Then, Rock was running. He surged up from the ground with the might of his elemental legs and launched himself over the heads of the caravan, soaring through the air for three hundred feet and landing off to the side of the caravan.
I grinned as I considered how well Rock would have done at puissance. Hmm… I think that was the name for the high jumping event that horses did back on Earth. Oh well. It didn’t matter. That was a thing from my past, and Rock would never have been allowed to compete. He wasn’t even a horse.
We spent the next hour racing around the hills. In the distance, I could see the mountains and knew that we needed to get past those soon. At one point, I got down and let Robbie ride on Rock by himself, with me walking next to them. The boy must have thought he was king of the world then, because his joy was obvious.
A couple of times, I caught a flash of magic off to the side, but whenever I looked it was gone. It seemed the fairies were still here, but hadn’t decided what they were going to do. I didn’t let that make me cut my time with my son short, though, and kept playing with him until the caravan started moving.
When we rejoined them, I returned him to his mother. It was time for him to eat, anyway, and that wasn’t something I was properly equipped for. What I had to figure out now, though, was exactly what I might be able to do to get the caravan moving faster.
I rode Rock around the edge of the caravan. There were dozens of wagons, and though—if he was willing—I could have Rock pull a few of the wagons much faster than the horses or oxen could, that wouldn’t fix the problem. Heck, I could probably jog while hauling one of the wagons behind me faster than we were going. It wouldn’t work for the entire caravan, though.
I snorted. All this power, and I couldn’t make the wheels on the wagons that passed us as I watched them turn any faster. I considered going and working on some of my own development, but felt lazy doing only that. I really wanted to speed up the caravan. I could push Vemilla to travel longer, but Rava had warned against doing that too often. It had to be something else.
I had an idea. It might not work… yet, but it would provide me with an opportunity to train and perhaps a way to speed up the caravan. I explained my plan to Rock, and he seemed willing to try it out—which was good, because I couldn’t do it without him.
We rode out in front of the caravan and stayed a dozen feet or so in front of the lead wagon. I telepathically informed Rava about my plan and asked her to let Vemilla and all the drivers know to just go with it. Then I began cycling my ki.
I pulled the ambient mana in from around me and converted it as I began to condense my ki. My core was nearly full, and my channels looked healthier than ever after the good night’s sleep I’d gotten last night, so this phase didn’t take long.
Once I could no longer hold any more ki in my core, I focused on Rock and our connection. I began to pour ki into him, solidifying the connection between us. The elemental was likewise cycling ki and Earth Mana, which suffused his core. Cultivation came naturally to him, but it was as an extension of our connection. He didn’t have the same intentionality with it that I did.
As our cores began to spin in sync, I felt the power build. I didn’t know if this was going to be enough, but figured it was still a good way of pushing myself. Our connection was important, but so, too, was this type of work to expand our cores. I still had gods to deal with—and I would need all the power I could muster when push came to shove.
Then, when the looping power had reached a point where I felt like it was going to explode out of us, I pushed it down into the ground beneath us. This power infused the ground, flavoring our combined ki with Rock’s Earth Mana.
The power poured into the trail we were traveling along. It felt like my consciousness spread out to cover the third of a mile over which the caravan stretched on the road. It was the strangest sensation, to feel like my mind wasn’t in my body... Or maybe that was my soul.
Rock was used to merging with the ground, but it was a new experience for me. I had briefly experienced something like this when I’d fought my first earth elemental, but that had ended in my first death, so I wasn’t exactly eager for a repeat.
Instead, I maintained a firm hold on my concept of self, while still allowing my power to spread out over the road—or rather, under the road. Nothing happened for several minutes as I began to adapt to this strange new sensation.
Mind Core Formation +1% (Current 96%)
The notification caught me off guard, but was very welcome.
Connection with Rock increased by +12%
Soul: +1
Various other notifications continued to pop up. Some of them made sense to me and others not so much.
Mana Fusion: +2
Ki Infusion: +3
Telepathy: +3
Still, I paid attention to the notifications, if for no other reason than they let me know what parts of myself were being pushed to create the desired effect. Not that it seemed to have done anything yet.
New Skill Gained: Soul Projection +1
Soul: +2
When I felt like I couldn’t stretch myself any further, I pushed for the road to move—just a bit, just in a way that would make the wagons move slightly faster. I pictured one of those flat walkways like an escalator at the airports. Some people just stand there and let it carry them, but many people walk like they are on a mission while on it. It pushed them along slightly faster than they might have walked on their own. That was what I was trying to accomplish.
The strain was tremendous. I felt all my ki being drained from my core. It felt like my body was being stretched, and a pressure started to build within my gut as I felt myself emptied out.
Rock was faring a little better, but I didn’t know how much. Still, I wouldn’t let go. I was determined to get the caravan moving faster. INDOMITABLE wouldn’t allow me to do anything less; I kept pushing.
Time seemed to lose all meaning as it was a continual struggle to stretch my awareness along the road and move everything forward. I felt the horses get skittish and people shout, but didn’t have sufficient mental capacity to do more than note it happened. It took all I had to do just this. The road moved. It was working but felt pitifully slow, if only because of the massive scale.
When things started to get fuzzy, I was forced to release it. Pushing was good, but I wasn’t going to get yelled at for almost dying again. As soon as I broke the cycle of our circulation, Rock dissolved beneath my feet, dumping me unceremoniously onto the road. I barely managed to roll out of the way of the first wagon before its oxen trampled me.
Moments later, Lina was standing over me.
I blinked as I looked up at her and saw that the sun was setting behind her head. That couldn’t be right. I had started doing this only a few hours past sunrise.
“He’s okay,” the bunny girl announced. “Just exhausted.”
“I’d say so,” Rava said, “he kept it up for over eight hours. We must have gained an entire day’s travel.”
“We’ll see how okay he is after I tell him what I think about him doing something like this,” Josie growled.
Nimeera chimed in, “He was doing it mostly for you. He wants you to get to the tournament in plenty of time.”
“I know, and that makes me feel all the more angry with him. I want him safe more than I want to get to the tournament.”
I’m sure their conversation continued after that, but I was so exhausted that I must have lost consciousness. My final thought, before slipping into the sweet embrace of sleep, was that my women were never going to let me hear the end of this.
Chapter 17 - Not a Silly Bunnygirl at All
When I woke up, the sun had nearly set, but I was on my bed and the tent was set up. They’d done that quickly. None of my wives were sitting by me, which was honestly a bit of a relief. I needed a minute to look inward before having them yell at me.
I checked, and my channels and core all seemed good. In fact, they were larger than before. I had gained a few more levels in various skills once I was past the point of being able to take note of the notifications. That level of focus was a bit scary, but I thought back on it.
This was what I was learning about INDOMITABLE. I had to strongly believe in what I was doing. I’d let myself get fixated on finding a way to move the caravan faster and… here I was. My body felt like I’d been through the ringer, but I was definitely recovering. The more my ki began to build back up the stronger I felt.
I glanced at the rest of the skill ups to note them.
Soul Projection: +5
Telepathy: +4
Soul: +2
Durability: +1
Identification with INDOMITIABLE has minimally improved.
All good stuff. I sighed, then sat up. I felt fine, no weakness or dizziness. In fact, moving was making me feel better. My core spun a bit faster and the ambient mana around me was converted to ki, at a subconscious level.
I stood up and stretched before walking out of the tent. My three wives, Nimeera, and Robbie were all at the table eating. Hmm… maybe this wasn’t so bad. They had gone ahead and started without me—or at least they were getting ready to.
I gave them my most winning smile. “Hey, so what’s for dinner?”
“Just trail bread and rations tonight,” Nimeera replied.
I tried to hide my disappointment. Lina’s cooking was one of the reasons I’d so quickly grown to love life in Olimero. And I knew she loved cooking for me as much as I loved eating what she cooked.
“And don’t go giving Lina a complex about it. If you hadn’t gone and passed out, she might have had time to cook,” Josie said.
“Oh, don’t blame Rob…,” Lina began.
Rava cut my bunnykin off. “This time, I agree with Josie. Pushing oneself to one’s limits is important, but so is knowing when to stop. What if we’d been attacked by fairies while Rob was exhausted? We would have been compromised—and while the rest of us might have been able to fight them off, we’d be down our best fighter. Whereas, if he had stopped an hour earlier, he might not have been so completely exhausted.”
She was right. I knew it to my core. INDOMITABLE was all well and good, but it should be reserved for when it was needed. Even the importance of training didn’t overcome the necessity of being able to defend my family.
I came over and sat down next to Lina. “Whatever we have will be a wonderful meal with you lovely ladies for company.” I dipped my head. “And you are correct, I need to learn how to train without overdoing things. Maybe we can work on that tomorrow.”
My wives seemed skeptical about my ability to make good on my offer, which I suppose was reasonable, but then Robbie stole the scene, and I was forgotten. He pushed up from where he sat on Lina’s lap and leaned over to me, his arms spread wide. “Dada!”
The table exploded into a flurry of conversation.
“Did he just say what I think he did?”
“Oh, that’s adorable.”
“Can he say anything else?”
“Great, he spends all day with me, but then his first word is ‘dada.’ Go figure.”
I grabbed him and his outstretched arms became a hug. Apparently, if my son was fine with me, then they all were, too. They took turns hugging him—I’m not sure if a toddler ever got more affection. Then again, he essentially had five mothers—as each of my wives treated him as though he was their son. They, of course, deferred to Lina, but were all open arms when it came to the little guy.
Even Nimeera had clearly warmed up to him.
It made me miss my wives back home and my daughter, Sarah, who I had barely gotten to spend any time with. Seeing them all try to get Robbie to repeat ‘dada’, or to say other things, was hilarious. Josie was trying to get him to say ‘JoJo’, while Lina tried for ‘mama’. And while Rava sat back with an inscrutable look on her face for a while, she eventually tried to get him to make an ‘rrrr’ sound.
Eventually I spoke up. “Tell me about what I missed today, and I’ll tell you about the new skill I gained.”
Rava groaned, “I swear you’re the luckiest man alive. Of course, you got a new skill. You probably even gained more than one level in it.”
“Uh…” I ducked my head, afraid I’d get smacked, “six levels… actually.”
They all just stared at me.
I decided I’d better go first, so I explained what I had done and what the results had been. As they told me what it had felt like from their perspective—less like the ground was moving and more like somehow everything became easier as long as you were moving in that direction. Whether it was the horses, people walking, or the wagon wheels, everything just moved better.
“That is,” Rava added, “unless you tried to move in the opposite direction. Then, it felt like you were trying to swim upstream. If you weren’t the Sheriff, I’d tell you that you could make a fortune moving caravans that way. We made it all the way to the mountain pass, and I was starting to worry that you were going to try and take the wagons up the pass at night.”
“I ran out of steam… err… ki I guess.”
“That’s fine. It would be better if you didn’t try it again tomorrow. We need to move slower through the pass, so we don’t break any wheels or axles.”
Nimeera spoke up, “And there is the fort to consider. They likely would be up in arms if an entire caravan started streaking across the ground toward them at the insane pace we must have kept yesterday.”
“Was there any word from the fairies today?”
Josie shook her head.
“Okay. Well, I want to visit Yonderton. I’m missing Mursha and Daria and seeing Robbie like this makes me want to see how much baby Sarah has grown. As I understand it, the pass is one of the safest parts of this journey, because it is patrolled by forces from Westerton. I’ll use the flight potions to get home, and then fly back, linking up with the caravan on the other side of the mountain.”
I paused, knowing my next statement would go over like a turd in the punchbowl. “But, because of the threat from the fairies, I want to take Lina and Robbie back with me.”
Lina looked at me. She tilted her head to the side with a glare and asked, “You’re planning on leaving me and Robbie in Yonderton, aren’t you?”
“Not a silly bunnygirl at all, are you? I know you aren’t happy about it, but I want Robbie to be safe. So even if you don’t want to, do it because I ask you to—do it for our son.”
“That isn’t fair!” Lina pouted.
“He does have a point, sister,” Rava said.
“I’ll spend tonight with just you, and we can leave in the morning. And I’ll still come back to visit you and the others every week. It isn’t like you won’t get time with me.”
I could tell that she still wanted to argue against it, but knew that it was the wise decision. “Only because you asked it of me, husband. But you are gonna need to work extra hard to make it up to me tonight.”
I threw my hands up in the air in mock fear. “Arghh… please, say it isn’t so.”
She smiled and then we all ate, the conversation devolving into small talk about what trouble Lina could get into in Yonderton while I was away, or what Josie planned to do once we finally reached Centrum. They even teased me about meeting up with Rose in Westerton.
We talked late into the night, long after Rava had to leave to go take care of caravan business. Eventually, Auntie JoJo took a sleeping Robbie from his mother and let him cuddle with her for the night, and Lina dragged me off to the bedroom.
I loved it. Of course, any guy would have. And not needing to sleep made it a long night, although I finally let Lina get a couple hours of rest, right before dawn. I even let her sleep through the others tearing down the tent. She woke up with all the extra noise, but the gesture was still appreciated.
