Harper

Alone at night again. It was strange to get so attached to not being alone so quickly. Amber moving downstairs with the rest and having her own room made her feel more vulnerable than ever. Without her magic waking her with terror it really wasn't necessary to have someone there for her. Knowing Hint was around helped take the edge off it. Nevertheless, sleep eluded her.

So instead, she explored her newly revealed power. Grand Arrays transcended Cosmic laws and worked using something called the CONTINUUM. Harper's skill fed her examples a computer chip designed in the correct alignment for worlds with laws that didn't support magic. In a world of magic, it could be based on runes, scripts, or ritual circles, again depending on the local Cosmic laws.

Here in Leternum, a grand array was more like a ritual circle with a few local twists. Power could travel the lines clockwise or counterclockwise. Different rings in the same layer could have any direction of energy flow. Finally, and very unlike ritual circles, they could have layers. More magical circles could be stacked above the base and modifying the one below it.

A substantial departure from her artistic skillset. It seemed more like engineering at first. As her intelectus continued to feed her information, she got a sense that there was a place in the skillset for intuition in making new arrays. They wouldn't work very well at first, but after making a proof of concept, she could engineer away after that. Hopefully, her building skill would help?

Right now, she had one blueprint, the Earth inter-cosmic array. It was sprawling and layered like a complex clockwork timepiece. Harper wanted so badly to have an intelectus for this skill that she could talk to. Shaking her head she knew it wouldn't work. Harper would need to gain some skill levels before doing that. Remembering the pain and terror that resulted from her last overdrawing of willpower made her shiver. To be fair, she could just funnel her magic to Hint, but a pounding headache was enough of a deterrent by itself.

Instead, she waded into the blueprint herself. Focusing on a simple and small enough ring let her decipher its function. All of the array rings that she could understand were in the layers above the base array. At first glance, it performed dozens of actions. Skipping around to view several, the general impression Harper built was that there each one would mostly do three things, but each part wasn't simple.

Absorb power, align power, and target the release of that power. To simplify it more, Harper started thinking input, conversion, output.

Instead of continuing to dart her perspective around, she settled to pick one apart. Harper yawned.

Warden, you are looking sleepy. Maybe you'd perform better after some rest. Hint spoke to her mind.

"You just want me to sleep so you can spend overflow Building points," Harper said.

"Yes Warden, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong," Hint spoke through the magic speaker.

It was stupid considering they could think to each other, but Harper preferred talking in private.

"You seem to forget what I want, though," Harper said.

"Actually, you've never told me," Hint spoke meekly.

The shift in tone caught Harper by surprise. So she put herself into Hint's 'shoes.' How would I feel if I could ask my creator what they wanted? It was a daunting thought, right beside knowing without a doubt what your purpose was. Or maybe not. People talked to their parents all the time. Wasn't that most like what this situation was?

Harper was kinda like a parent... except she had absolute control over Hint. For a moment, she almost ordered Hint to do what she wanted and disregard any other commands. Giving Hint freedom was a powerful kneejerk reaction but a moment of caution held her back. She built Hint, which made her responsible for what Hint did. The knowledge of what Hint was doing with the animals in the basement weighed on Harper enough to stay her hand.

"I want a lot of things," Harper started. "Right now, I want to learn Grand Arrays. Helping everyone who was abducted get home is a long road away, but I want that too." With a smile on her face and in her voice, she continued. "Completing quests in real life! It'd be a dream come true."

Harper's smile fell. "I want to build my Apothecary and Alchemy skills or something else that heals the broken. What the hell is the purpose of magic if we can't use it to transcend sickness?"

"For suppressing the irredeemable and rehabilitating the criminal," Hint answered. "But I do see what you are saying."

Hint was an intelectus from her own mind. Was this what she'd be like if she hyperfocused one thing?

Hint interrupted her thoughts. "So if those are what you want, then why not get some rest?"

Harper bit her lip then huffed out a breath of air. "I'm having trouble falling asleep."

"Would like me to help?" Hint asked. "What's the point of magic if not to help you fall asleep?"

Harper laughed at her words coming back to her. She nodded and laid back down. "Lights, please?"

The glowing crystals around the room dimmed down, and darkness embraced her.

"Hint?"

"Yes Warden."

"Goodnight."

"Goodnight, Warden."

Waking from a deep, dreamless sleep, Harper felt more well-rested than matched the lumpy bed. Thank you, Hint. Harper began to feel bad for all the negative things she'd thought of Hint. It really was just Hint using her voice that bugged her, which wasn't fair.

"Is anyone up yet?" Harper asked.

"Everyone else is," Hint replied.

"Oh, has everyone eaten?" Harper asked.

"All but Mathew," Hint said.

Half a smile tugged at her lip. She could whip up some food for the both of them. Chores first. She thought.

Climbing a short set of built-in steps, Harper reached the top shelf of her storage. Sliding open a wooden window, she put her solar charger in the morning light.

After a good stretch, she left for the common room. The room had grown. With Hint no longer hiding her activity, waking up to a new and improved Hub would be an everyday occurrence. Replacing the firepit with a fireplace was a nice touch.

Humming, Harper gathered up her primitive cooking tools and reviewed her relevant perk.

[Preservation ~ Cooking ~ perk tier one

Reduce reserves decay of cooked food by 25%. Raw traits of food source preserved fully. Raw traits preserved in this way become easier to refine into cooked food as time passes]

With the help of an intelectus to draw more meaning out of the perk, Harper understood that some leftover part of the animal or plant used as food ingredients could be drawn out as a dish. This leftover trait could be consumed for benefits.

Food with buffs! She was stoked. If it wasn't for Grand Arrays having 'Grand' in its name and the whole quest from Earth thing, this would have her undivided obsession, at least for a while.

Most of yesterday, Harper improved her cooking with this perk. Infusing the drying meat with bubbles of mind power to capture some elusive quality. The slight rise in resistance she felt when cooking raw foods gave Harper confidence that she was doing something other than having a vivid imagination.

Having cooked most of yesterday, she did raise her Cooking skill to level 11. That second perk point felt like a payday just waiting for a shopping spree. So she did what she learned to do with the payday of a hefty commission, sleep on it.

[Cooking ~Perk Tier One

Lure - Improve the flavor and aroma of the dish

Breaking Bread - Creates an influence of teamwork and allegiance among those who eat your cooking together

Perk Tier Two

Nose knows - Gain a scent based intuition of ingredients that pair to form or modify a trait]

Harper again tried to weigh the pros and cons of this choice. Lure was tempting on a personal level. Becoming a person who always gets praised for enjoyable food. That was what she wanted. Not just the recognition, but if it came from the system, she'd know it was true. It would be praise she could accept.

But life wasn't easy yet. Harper twisted her thin lips in a bitter expression. Flavor was a low concern. For now. She thought.

The other two were not so easy to sort through. Nose knows was clearly down the path of food that would provide buffs. Years of gaming made her assume this held a powerful potential. Harper knew it was silly to compare games to life, but when it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, you treat it like a duck.

All the same, she hadn't made any food that provided a buff yet. Those future dreams weren't right around the corner... newcomers were.

It grated on her desire to min-max, but the bottom line was that this living situation wasn't a game.

Selecting Breaking bread, Harper consoled herself that she'd keep leveling, and more perk points were around the corner.

Getting to the kitchen area, she looked over the whole setup. The stone countertop with a sink would make a good prep station, but the chronic lack of utensils both irked and inspired her. So far, she hadn't found any good workarounds. The closest she got was trying to build a structure for imaginary mite-sized peoples that just so happened to be shaped like a fork. It didn't work but there had to be a way, right?

With that falling through, Harper primarily used sharp sticks. For now, it would work. All their food was meat anyway. A kebab would get by until they discovered fruit, veggies and spices.

Putting that out of her mind for now, Harper got to whipping up what she could. Thanks to Ben gathering some reagents, a batch of meat from yesterday was refrigerated.

Humming a familiar song Harper, relit the fire with a pinch of blast and catalyst powders.

As much as she tried, there didn't seem like a lot she could do to put extra effort into her bird meat kabobs. Turning them over a lot so the fats didn't drip straight off and making sure nothing burned. With one last turn, she removed the caramelized fats and sizzling meat from the fireplace.

It's the effort that counts, Harper tried to convince herself.

Letting her smile show through, Harper brought the yield of her work to where Mathew was sitting.

Looking at him, her heart broke just a bit. Living in a shell had to be hell. Harper would know. All that time spent unable to reach outside the barrier dividing her from the rest of the world.

"Here," Harper offered.

Brown eyes sunken into his armor looked up. "Um, thank you. But I'm fasting."

"Fasting?" Fat dripped down her hand like melting ice cream.

"Yeah, I'm trying to gain some skills on purpose to make an actual build. Grant had some insight. Those people before us noticed that people had difficulty acquiring new skills when they were leveling any skill they already had," Mathew said. "The theory is that there is a limit on skill growth either in us or in the system. So to get an actual build going, I need to avoid leveling all my skills including Digestion."

He chuckled. "I've never even dieted. This is new to me. With so many reserves, I shouldn't have any problem not eating for a while. But that does smell really good."

"Oh well," Harper stuck a kabob in her moth and mumbled around it. "More for me." Only it came out more like "ore 'or Eee"

Spinning around to hide a blooming blush, she turned to face Ben. His stealth was unnerving sometimes.

"I could use some more to eat if you're offering?" Ben smiled.

Wordlessly Harper handed over a pair of meat sticks.

"So, how does the quest work on your end?" Ben led the way to a new set of stone table and benches. As a part of the 'prison' they were anchored down but they were also fabricated by magic so Harper wasn't about to complain.

Harper's mind stuttered with the task of shifting gears to the Earth quest. "On my end... Well, I haven't built any Grand Arrays yet, so I don't know all that goes into it yet. But I've got the blueprint the quest needs me to make. Trying to take it apart and see how the pieces work is like understanding, I don't know, a whole factory? By just watching what happens. It's good that we need a ridiculous amount of Alpha energy because this is going to take some time."

Ben pressed his lips together and nodded. "Makes sense."

"Something wrong?" Harper asked.

"It's nothing," Ben waved away. Seeing Harpers 'really' look, he relented and kept talking. "I have family. Mom and Dad are probably going through the transition just like my big sister is. But I have two younger brothers. In fact, I was babysitting them when the wave hit. It's stupid but I feel like I've failed. I was trusted to be responsible for them. I know, I know." He threw up his hands forestalling Harper's comments. "It wasn't my fault; it's not my choice. But my feelings don't care. As much as I want to make sure my Mom, Dad and sister show up here safe and sound. I want home to be safe and sound too."

Oh god, that had to be so hard. Harper thought, her heart going out. "Well you're right, it's not your fault, and your feelings are wrong. You've done the best you can with a bad situation. That's all that all of us have done."

Ben rubbed the back of his neck. "So what about you? How is your family?"

Harper's heart clenched with old familiar pain. "I'm only looking for friends."

"Lucky," Ben said.

He didn't get it. Harper wished she could have the pain and worry of missing family. The certainty she carried wasn't good luck. Sucking back a retort, she sat in silence. He didn't need to be understood right now. He was in pain, and he needed a friend.

"What is her name?" Harper asked. "Your older sister."

"Marry," Ben's eyes got distant.

"How about I fill her shoes until you see her again," Harper bumped her shoulder into his encouragingly. "I'll be your big sister for a bit."

A wave of sadness lowered his shoulders and shone in his eyes. Ben gave a weak nod. Oh the weight he's carried. Harper promised Marry and herself that she'd try to hold Ben together until he could reunite with his family.