acaswell

Chapter 70: Below the Surface - Markets and Multiverses

Added 2023-03-07 02:27:20 +0000 UTC

My mother stepped out of the room, before she returned with a pink dress. The dress wasn’t new, and I could tell that it was handed down from my older sister, based on the wear and tear at the edges. Most odd, the dress was clearly made for someone a little smaller than me. I wondered if it was a hand me down from my sister, since she was older, before frowning. The fact that I was taller than average for my age in this family might be a bit more of a problem than I thought.

“Miria, come over here. I’ll help you put on your dress,” said my mother, smiling at me. “You’re still less than ten years old, so you need to wear pink whenever you’re outside. I’ll help you get it on.” I paused, wondering what my age had to do with the color of clothes, before I shrugged. Right now, I didn’t understand the culture of this world very well. I also wondered if the reason my dress was too small was because people didn’t wear pink after they turned ten. The midwife who had helped my mother give birth to me had been wearing pink, but perhaps there was some sort of significance to the colors people wore in this world.

Shrugging, I walked over to my mother, who helped me change into the pink dress. Since I was an adult mentally, someone helping me get changed felt a little embarrassing, but since I was only five years old, perhaps it made sense that my parents were helping me change.

While I was getting dressed, my older sister barged into the room where my mother was helping me, before she stared curious at me.

“Mommy, can I wear a pink dress too?” she asked. I took a closer look at my older sister, and frowned. I would have guessed she was around six years old. Didn’t my mother say that children below the age of ten wore pink? I had a bit of a hard time believing that she was ten, unless my species aged very differently than humans did.

My mother shook her head. “You’ve turned eleven a week ago, sweetie. You’re a little too old to wear pink now.”

My sister pouted and pointed at me. “That’s not fair! Miria gets to wear pink! I want to wear pink too!”

My mother smiled. “If you still like wearing pink, you can learn to be a healer, Ellie. Healers get to wear pink all the time.”

My sister, named Ellie, frowned. “I want to wear pink now though.”

My mother smiled, and kissed Ellie on her forehead. “You can wear pink at home, sweetie. Don’t worry, as long as you’re not in a public space nobody will say anything about which color you wear.” My mother frowned. “But you also need to be nice. Children can’t wear pink after they turn eleven outside, and Miria is already wearing one of your old dresses. Don’t you think she deserves to be happy wearing pink for the next five years as well?”

My sister frowned, and gave my pink dress a longing look, before she sighed and turned away. She didn’t seem happy about the conclusion of the conversation, but she didn’t seem like she was going to kick up a fuss about it either.

I couldn’t help but think more about my mother’s statement though. My sister was eleven? Clearly, my species aged pretty differently than humans did. I just didn’t know how big the difference was.

Eventually, my mother finished helping me into the pink dress, and I stepped back out of the room. My brothers, who were both wearing black, emerged from one of the other rooms of the house. They both gave me small nods, before they turned back towards each other and grinned, caught up in their own world. My mother gave my sister’s blue dress a quick check while my father double-checked my brother’s clothes, before my father opened the door for my mother and I.

My mother held my hand as we walked out the front door, as if worried that I trip or get separated from her. I took a step forward, and got my first proper look at the world outside of our home.

Far above our heads was a giant ceiling made of white and pink stone. I took one look at it, before I realized we lived in some sort of underground city. However, the underground wasn’t dark, the way I had imagined it would be.

Instead, glowing moss clung to nearly every surface in the city, as well as the ceiling. My eyes, which had incredible night vision, made it easy for me to pick out all of the details in our surroundings, even though the moss-light shouldn’t have been enough to see everything clearly.

Mushrooms sprouted from the stone floor, and even from the sides of some more derelict houses. Much like the moss, they were luminescent, giving the entire city a soft, beautiful blue glow. The entire cave that the city was located inside of was shaped kind of like a giant dome, although it wasn’t quite as a perfect sphere. There were a variety of jagged surfaces on the walls and ceiling.

Supporting the ceiling were several giant pillars, all made out of a strange, yellow and black stone. I could see strange symbols etched on each stone, although I couldn’t tell if they were magical or religious in nature. The pillars were also covered in glowing moss, although the moss that grew on these stones glowed green instead of blue. The pillars looked… almost perfect, as if they had grown out of the ceiling and cave floor to perfectly support the city ceiling. However, the fact that they were a completely different kind of rock from every other part of our surroundings made me assume that the pillars were magical in nature.

Finally, to the north of the city, I could see a large stone fort, which had been constructed out of the same white stone as the pillars were. Just a bit further ahead of the fort, I could vaguely see pink grass in the distance, and I could even see sunlight. The pink grass took a bit of getting used to; I had never seen pink grass before now. It was my first time seeing such a strange color for normal flora in a dimension. I also wondered why we were living underground, when the surface was so clearly visible just a few hours of walking away from our current location. Was the surface dangerous or something? I shook my head. I could figure out more details about the surface later.

I turned my attention back to the city, and tried to guess how many people lived here. I didn’t know how many children the average family had, but if I assumed every family had around 2 or 3 children on average, this city probably had around 20,000 people living in it. Which was a huge leap upwards from the village of 600-700 people I had lived in on the islands. The population of all of the villages on the islands combined had probably been around 10,000. To have twice that number stuffed into a much smaller area made me feel… surprisingly at home. I wondered if I had lived in some kind of densely-packed settlement in my first life.

“Are you getting distracted, Miria?” Asked my mother, smiling as she gently tugged my hand forward. “We haven’t gotten to the fun part yet! Let’s get going.” She gave my wrist a gentle tug.

I let my mother gently pull me ahead while my father corralled my more rambunctious brothers. While I had been taking in my first clear look at the city, they had been running around, laughing and getting into trouble.

Meanwhile, my sister was hovering near my mother and I, although she occasionally looked around town and smiled at some of the other adults nearby. I got the feeling that she was a pretty outgoing kid.

My two brothers slipped out of our sight for a moment, and my mother frowned.

“Don’t run around, Jonathan! Ruman, don't just follow your older brother around when he’s running off, or I’ll give both of your desserts to your father tonight, and make you watch him eat it! Apples are important for your bodies and cost more than we’re usually willing to pay for a meal, but if watching your father eat some makes you behave I’ll do it!”

“Yes, mom,” said my two brothers, who slipped back into view after my mother threatened them.

“Mama! Apple… rare?” I asked, curious. Based on my mother’s words, the special dessert of my brothers was apples. Which wasn’t something I normally considered a special dessert, but maybe some crops were hard to get since we lived underground?

My mother nodded. “It’s not overwhelmingly expensive to import fruit from the surface here, since part of our settlement is on the surface. But surface settlements are still very rare, and Orukthyri raids sometimes burn the surface settlement to the ground and destroy production again. So don’t take things like fresh fruit for granted, even if we’re one of the few settlements that are partially on the surface. Okay, sweetie?” said my mother.

I nodded, absently thinking over her words. Orukthyri? Three of the species I had bloodlines from were the Lunenthyri, Undenthyri, and Arlenthyri. I was beginning to think that ‘Thyri’ was some sort of specific term that was added to the end of most species names. Though, that did make me wonder why the Ortha, my fourth species bloodline, didn’t have a name that ended in ‘Thyri.’

Odd.

Surface settlements being rare was also useful information. Perhaps the Orukthyri, whatever they were, was what made the surface dangerous? If raids from them was a common occurrence, it made sense that most of our settlement was below ground.

“Mama? Orukthyri? What?”

“Monsters, sweetie. Not true monsters, the way the Outsiders, Shifted, and the creatures of the Deep Shadow are, but they are more monstrous for what they once were.” My mother’s expression became unnaturally grim, as she glared at the surface, which was just barely visible beyond the fort. “We’ll talk about them when you’re older. It’s not a topic appropriate for children. But never go outside of the city, sweetie. And never go to the surface. The Orukthyri are there, and unless you’re a Witch or a Shaper, fighting one is nearly impossible without help.”

Her hand tightened over mine, and I nodded.

Witches and Shapers, huh. Most likely, those were the names of essence-users in this world. I filed this information away for later use.

My father seemed to frown at my mother. “You shouldn’t mention the Orukthyri yet. Miria is too young. That kind of topic is best left for when she’s a lot older.”

One of my brothers gave the surface a longing look. “The Orukthyri don’t seem that scary. I’m sure with some training, we can also take them,” he said, tugging on Ruman’s hand. “Swordmaster Galin says I have a lot of potential, and once I turn thirty he said I’m welcome to apprentice under him and learn to fight.”

My mother and father both whirled towards Jonathan, who had spoken, before my father shook his head. “Jonathan, the Orukthyri are impossible to defeat for a normal warrior, and probably even for swordmaster Galin. The soldiers of the stone fort need a huge numerical advantage or good terrain to fight against them. If you want to be a soldier, I won’t stand in your way. You're getting older, and you have the right to choose how you live your life once you turn thirty. But don’t underestimate the Orukthyri. Back when all of us lived under the rule of the Ortha, the Orukthyri were shaped specifically for war. All of the intelligence and magical potential that was stripped away from their subspecies has been exchanged for… terrifying war potential. They are… different. Twisted. If you ever fight one on your own, you will die. No matter how skilled of a warrior you are, they are stronger than we can be.” My father sighed, giving the surface a strangely longing look.

Jonathan didn’t quite seem to believe my father, but he let the statement pass without any comment.

I nodded thoughtfully as I listened in to the conversation.

Thirty years old was considered old enough to begin an apprenticeship in this world. That was pretty convincing evidence that my current species aged much more slowly than humans.

I wondered how old my brother was.

“How old… oldest person in town?” I asked, even more curious now.

My father pursed his lips in thought. “I’m not sure, sweetie. I hear old lady Dobis turned 162 last year? She’s the oldest person I know of, at least.” My father shrugged. “She’s pretty old, at least.”

So the lifespan of my current species is probably around double the lifespan of an average person, I thought, nodding. I recalled that with really good medical care, living to eighty years old wasn’t too unusual. If we had a couple people around 160 years old in this city, I could roughly assume that people aged half as quickly on this world. It might not be incredibly precise, but it seemed like a good enough estimate for easy math.

With my immediate questions about longevity answered, I took more time to look at the people of the town we were traveling through the streets.

The people of this town were… a very mixed bunch.

Some of them, like me, looked basically indistinguishable from regular humans. They had four fingers and a thumb on their hands, normal builds, ordinary hair colors, and some of them even had normal, human-shaped pupils and eyes.

Some of them were only a little bit different, like my father. They would have an extra finger or toe, or gray or red-colored skin. Some of them were abnormally tall or short, and a few of them had glowing eyes. A few of them even had teeth like that of a shark, which nearly caused me to shriek in fear the first time one of them gave us a friendly smile. However, after I got used to it, I was able to start giving the other townsfolk friendly smiles back, even if their appearances unnerved me a little bit.

All in all, the ‘people’ of this world were far more varied than I would have normally expected. No two people looked quite the same, and while everyone was relatively human shaped, there was a lot of smaller variance from one person to the next. The colors they wore were also very… specific. Blacksmiths, for example, all wore gray and brown colors. More common laborers seemed to wear brown. I wasn’t quite sure what every color combination meant, but I could tell that color-coding was something rather deeply embedded in the color.

As we passed through another street intersection, I saw a woman wearing a grand blue and white dress. Unlike most of the townsfolk, who wore somewhat simple clothes, this woman’s dress was clearly tailored perfectly to fit her, and was adorned with all sorts of frills and extra designs. She looked like a noblewoman, or someone of high status.

My parents, upon seeing her, bowed, and my brothers quickly followed suit.

I stared at the woman, baffled, before I started trying to bow as well. Everyone else was doing it, so it must have some sort of meaning here, and I didn’t need to slight a noble or something.

However, my mother was clearly unhappy with my delayed reaction. She quickly wrapped an arm around my waist and helped me into a bowing posture.

“My apologies, great witch. My daughter is \newborn, as you can see,” said my mother, gesturing towards my pink clothing.

The witch laughed gently, and her voice sounded like bells ringing in the breeze. There was a sort of… odd quality to her sounds that I couldn’t quite place my finger on.

“Do not worry. I will not begrudge a child for ignorance, much less one that isn’t even ten years old yet.” The witch gave us a gentle smile. “Good luck to you as well, little one,” she said, focusing entirely on me for a moment. Then, the grand witch continued walking down the street.

My mother and father both gave the Grand Witch one more respectful nod as she left our line of sight.

I pushed the encounter out of my thoughts. By how respectful my parents were, and how my mother referred to Witches, it seemed that the ability to use magic was quite rare in this world.

Now that I thought about it, could I use magic here? If it was a rare ability, normally the odds would be against me. However…

I checked the description for my current body again. Or at least, one very specific part of it.

Note - due to the characteristics of a Transmigrator, it is impossible for a physical vessel to ever have Stats BELOW 70 or ABOVE 130 without input from your soul. For more information, please go to Luxcorp for a very cheap consultation on the mechanics of Transmigration and Reincarnation.

If I had to guess, someone who wasn’t talented with magic probably had Grade 0 in the relevant magic stats. However, Transmigrators had no way to ever roll below 70 in a given stat whenever we reincarnated.

Did that mean that we had a 100% chance of being capable of using magic in a world we were born into, as long as the right essences were present and our bodies were biologically capable of supporting spellcasting? I didn’t know if my body was biologically able to support manifestation and Alteration essence spellcasting, but I hoped I automatically had access to the spellcasting system. It would be a huge boon if Sallia, Felix and I were all capable of using magic as long as we had access to the right training and resources.

I decided to check with Sallia and Felix once we met up, and see if they had figured anything out. If we had a 100% chance of being capable of magic in any given world we went to, that would be a huge advantage in worlds where magic was limited to a certain subset of the populace like this one. But right now, I hadn’t even confirmed if I was able to use Manifestation and Alteration spellcasting, so I didn’t want to get my hopes up before I confirmed my suspicion. I would need to do more investigation once I got older.

I shook my head and pushed my thoughts to the side, as my family finally reached our destination.

We had reached a building with a large sewing needle carved on a sign just outside of the door. Just underneath it were words I couldn’t read, since I was illiterate right now. My mother, however, dove straight towards the shop, putting my thoughts of magic to the side.

Author's Note: