JESSICA

Dinner was rather pleasant, I still don’t know how the old man knew how to make soy sauce, but it had been over twenty years since I had good sushi. Growing up in Seattle meant I could find a decent sushi place pretty easily, but I didn’t even know they had it in this world.

I knew I had somehow spilled the beans to the old man, though likely because he was in a similar boat to me. When I was reborn in this world I had been told by the god that gave me the option that I wasn’t the only one from Earth that ended up here, as we occasionally found our way to this particular world. It did provide some explanation for Magnus though. I had tried dropping hints to see if he was another person reborn from Earth, but half the time he just looked confused. It made more sense once I saw Morgan’s cabin. It looked so much like a rustic house you could find in the Cascades that I had almost wept.

Right now was probably the best chance I had to speak to him about my situation. Magnus was showing Takahashi, Mai, and Vara his workshop while Richard was enjoying a shower. Morgan was sitting on his front porch with a couple glasses of that excellent mead he had on hand. Fenris, acting for all the world like an oversized house dog, was curled up at his feet.

Gathering my courage I stepped out onto the porch and took a seat on the chair next to him. I wasn’t sure how to start the conversation, but the old man did it for me as he handed me a mug with the mead in it and said, “So reincarnation or transference?”

Okay that was a good place to start, “Reincarnation. I was caught up in a riot, in the wrong place at the wrong time and earned myself a bullet and a helping of tear gas. Next thing I knew I was seated in a recliner across from a stunning redhead who was telling me I died.”

“Did she give you an actual explanation of where you were ending up?” he asked.

I nodded. She had in fact given me a few options, but I had chosen Alchair, this world. I liked the idea of taming monsters; too many video games in my childhood if I was being honest with myself.

“She actually said other people from Earth had come here before, and I wasn’t exactly a fan of the other options she gave me,” I replied.

“You got lucky then. I was dumped here by a trickster and told he wanted to see what kind of trouble I could get into. Granted I wasn’t in a great situation when I got shoved over here, but that’s besides the point,” he mused.

“Did you, cause trouble, I mean?” I asked.

The grin he flashed was an older more refined version of the mischievous smirk I had seen on Magnus’s face on more than one occasion over the past few months, and he said, “Oh I raised some Cain, now though I’m more than happy to stay on my mountain.”

“I’ve heard stories, and I’ll be that wasn’t the extent of it,” I said, “Did you get any boons for being dropped here?”

He nodded, “The Talent’s, mine were almost designed to give me a chance at thriving here. You?”

“I didn’t realize everyone had them, but I got to pick three that I got to start my life with. I wish I had been given descriptions or been told how common they were before I picked them,” I answered with a bit of bitterness in my tone.

“What did you pick?” he asked.

“Expanded Flow is my primary Talent, followed by Linguist, and Inner Well. Linguist has been pretty much useless since everyone seems to have a common language, Expanded Flow is so common that we’ve seen it in people not even at the Academy, and Inner Well hasn’t really been touched much because of the primary,” I answered.

“What do you mean that your Talent hasn’t been touched?” he asked with the curious gleam his grandson must have inherited from him.

“Well when I picked them I was told that your primary Talent comes with a perk and is more effective. Expanded Flow increases how quickly my aether recharges, and since I primarily use my crossbows I don’t go through much. The perk seems to be that any aether gathering bindings I create also charge faster, but I’m not enough of an artist to really do image binding,” I explained.

“Ahh, but image binding can also be done just with the pattern of the aether flow and a generic image. It doesn’t require the same level of artistic detail as drawing a portrait,” he answered.

“And when Ezekiel figures out how to bind Aether Sight that will be more useful,” I argued.

“Wait, what?” he asked shocked.

I smirked, “Oh, Magnus didn’t tell you? He figured out the eighth type of binding. Apparently it is possible to bind Talents to an aetherflow.”

The old man muttered angrily, “No he didn’t, little troublemaker probably wanted to surprise me with it.”

“Probably, though he may have just thought you already knew about it. Seems you gave him the impression of the wise old hermit from Chinese fiction,” I agreed.

“Bah, the best way to get people to stop asking questions is to be mysterious about it. If you add up my lives between here and there I have over a century under my belt,” he grumped.

I laughed and said, “I’m sure he’ll get around to telling you.”

“I don’t doubt it. Though back to your Talent. Why haven’t you made summoning crystals?” Morgan asked.

I looked at him quizzically and he sighed before saying, “One of the bindings on a crystal is an aether gathering sigil. It is how the creatures recharge their aether when they are bound. It also is how they grow in strength. Between the increased recharge rate and the large aether pool you should be able to bind a decent number of creatures.”

I facepalmed and murmured through my hand, “Why didn’t I think of that.”

Morgan let out a good natured chuckle and said, “Something to keep in mind is that no Talent is unusable if you apply it right. Take Harvesting for example. Materials from creatures can be used to create equipment that has a natural aetherical resonance. Such as the scythes of the Gust Mantis you encountered before. If you were to make a sword from those and bind a Wind Blade spell to it, the strength of the spell would be increased.”

“Yeah I had guessed something like that would be the case. I just never started to think of how to apply mine until I went to the school and saw what your grandson kept coming up with,” I said.

“He always did have a rather unique mind, I tried to encourage it as much as I could, but I was an old soldier when I arrived. More knowledgeable than most here about some things, but not the kind of prodigy he is with discoveries,” he pointed out.

“That’s odd considering how the faculty keeps being unsurprised about your knowledge,” I argued.

The old man shook his salt and pepper head before he replied, “You have to remember that study methods were developed extensively back on Earth. Most of the knowledge about binding here is passed down or copied. Experimentation was frowned upon because of the likelihood of creating monsters.”

“That seems to be changing,” I said.

He nodded, “I guess I’m still causing the chaos that the trickster wanted.”

I pointed at Fenris, “Is he a hint as to the trickster that sent you here?”

The big wolf looked up at me, so I gave him a scratch behind his ear causing his leg to thump in pleasure. Morgan though shook his own head and said, “No, wrong trickster. I named him Fenris because when I came across him he was trapped in a binding that was going to eventually turn him into a monster and he ate all the food I had gathered to last me the winter.”

I laughed, “So a ravenous wolf, bound away from humanity. It fits.”

Morgan laughed with me before saying, “It helps that my own Linguist talent was the primary, and it let me speak telepathically with any Aetherical Creature.”

I cocked my head and said, “Do you think mine will let me do that?”

He grinned, “Well from what I’ve seen the secondary talents just require a bit of juice to use.”

I concentrated on my own aether, trying to will it to activate the talent that had been unused so far. I felt the rush and could almost sense where all the creatures with an aether flow around me were. Not like Magnus had described seeing the flow, but more just a general feeling of their location. Fenris and Morgan were easy enough to identify; and I could sense five beings in the workshop, probably my friends along with Varis, and Richard was in the shower still. I didn’t get any indication of their strength, just that they were over that way. I also sensed that the large oak tree that dominated the clearing housed a creature. On instinct I reached out to that being, “Hello?”

A soft feminine voice came back to me, “Hello child, I had wondered when you would get around to greeting me.”

I gasped and said aloud, “She spoke back!”

The old man chuckled, “Yeah, Alara gets bored when she rests in her tree. I usually sit in her shade and read to her during her dormant periods. She can talk aloud when she’s out and about, but it takes the Talent to hear when she speaks back to you from the tree.”

“Please tell the old coot that just because I can’t speak aloud doesn’t mean my ears stopped working,” Alara said in a teasing voice.

“Can’t he hear you too?” I asked the dryad.

“Oh he can, which is why he’s turning red right now,” she answered.

I looked to Morgan and saw the blush on his cheeks which brought a laugh to burst out. When we had calmed down I asked, “Can you help me make some summoning crystals before our hunt? I never really learned how to make them.”

The old man nodded and said, “I will show you how I make them. Since you can communicate with the beasties directly you don’t need to bind them to follow specific directions, just tell them.”

My eyes widened and I said, “Oh so I don’t have to say ‘Pikachu, use Thunderbolt’ or anything like that.”

A laughing groan escaped his lips as he shook his head, “Dear child, please don’t make Pokemon jokes. It’s hard enough not to draw parallels with the various creatures here.”

She laughed and said, “Oh don’t worry. I could make Yu-Gi-Oh puns instead. I mean seriously, combat cards? What were you thinking?”

The old man hung his head and said, “I needed a way to use the local magic system. When I saw a portrait that had a binding on it I realized that I could create something similar to carry with me. I didn’t expect it to take off like it did.”

I reached over and patted his bowed head and said, “There there, at least you didn’t start challenging people to card duels.”

He laughed along with my little joke. We settled into a conversation music from Earth compared to here as we watched the sun set. I was content now that I had met someone else that understood the difficulties I had faced growing up with more varied knowledge than those around me.