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Humans Don't Make Good Familiars- Part 73
🕑 Added 2022-01-30 03:35:08 +0000 UTCJake’s POV
I felt like I was trudging through mud, probably because I actually was. I tripped on something and fell forwards, faceplanting the ground, and getting covered in filth. I looked to my left and right, the others were having a tough time too. You might be thinking I’m talking about the Neame, but I’m not. I’m talking about other familiars. We were all undergoing a test of sorts, without our summoners. We were all given a single direction, to reach the other end of the obstacle course and back; our task was to find and retrieve a specific object. The purpose of the test was to rate our capabilities so our summoners would better understand our limits… at least, that’s what I was told by Suma. I wasn’t actually present when everything was being explained. They thought that since I was intelligent, that I shouldn’t be present during the explanation just in case I figured out a quick way around the problems.
“Suma…” I said after wiping some mud from my forehead and cheek, “how much further does this mud pit go on?” We were talking our private connection since we were so far apart.
“Not much longer Jake, you’re nearly at the end.” She said. Suma was flying over the course giving me directions. “Do you see that tree? The one with the red leaves.”
“Yes,” I said approaching it.
“Okay good, make sure you don’t go near it.”
I stopped, “….why?”
“That looks like a Dragon’s Blood tree, they’re dangerous, but it’s difficult to tell from up here.” I went around the tree carefully. Good thing too, because another familiar, a borog, charged straight through its low hanging vines and… well, I’ll leave out the gory details. But suffice it to say, the aftermath was gruesome.
I soon came upon a set of three long narrow hallways that led underground. “Suma, any idea which way I should go?”
“I’m sorry Jake, I can’t tell which of the paths is connected to which exit.”
“Okay… I’m right-handed so I’ll go right.” I ducked down to avoid some low hanging roots from a small tree growing above the entrance of the underground hallway. The corridor itself was dark, damp, smelled of mold, and only got worse the deeper I went in. The single saving grace was that it looked built and not natural, so I was fairly certain I wasn’t going to end up in another situation like the cave on Dragon’s Hoard. “Suma, I’m telling you right now, if at any point I have to crawl on my belly to fit through a narrow tunnel I’m quitting this stupid training.” I joked… half joked. I created a ball of fire for light, something I was getting much better at, and tossed a separate fireball down the tunnel to see what was ahead. As the blue flames illuminated the path, I saw collapsed areas of walls and ceilings, roots that had grown through the tunnel and hung from the top, and something very surprising; I saw concrete. It was the first time since arriving in Suma’s world all those years ago I had seen stonework that wasn’t simply the molding or manipulation of existing rock. “Suma, what is this place?”
“What do you mean Jake?” She asked.
“Were these training grounds built on something?” I wondered as I approached the concrete. Getting closer, I could see it was the remains of a wall. It stood out as unnatural compared to the interwoven vines and dirt that made up the rest of the hallway.
“I don’t know, why?” She wondered sounding confused. I picked up a bit of the concrete and flipped it over after noticing some black markings on the side. The bottom, or rather I suppose top, of the decayed wall had runes on it. The runes themselves were in varying states of ruin as well. Most of them were completely smeared off, or cracked completely in half from the splitting of the concrete itself.
“I found runes down here, and concrete too.” I told her.
“Runes?” She said surprised. “What would runes be doing down there?”
“Well, your people use runes a lot right? Maybe this was a battle ground at one point? Really the concrete being here is more surprising to me.” I said and put a few of the broken bits of rune cover rock into my backpack. I figured I could just show Suma later, and maybe she would know more if she actually saw it, or she could ask someone who knew. I left the hallway a few minutes later, and was relieved to be out in the sun again. Well, actually it was overcast, but it was still better than being in a cave again.
“I see you know Jake, you came out of the middle exit. You’re not far now.” She said. “Turn left and walk forwards to the stream. When you reach it, follow it until I tell you to stop.” I followed her instructions and eventually came to a little creek flowing downhill. However, for some reason the water was a dull green. “Great, you’re at the stream, now just keep walking and don’t cross it until I say okay.” She told me.
“Why not?” I wondered.
“It’s not safe to cross it yet. If you were to fall in, then it could be deadly.” She explained seriously.
“Um, how deadly? Like, how does it kill you?” I wondered looking at the water.
“Jake, please don’t try to cross it.” Suma said urgently.
“I wasn’t going to; I was just curious.” I clarified, then began walking downstream like she instructed.
“I don’t know all the details, but I’ve heard rumors of Neame who just landed in the water to rest dying horrible deaths in just a few hours.”
“I guess that explains why I don’t see any fish in the water.” I noticed.
“Not anymore no, though I’m told there used to be.”
“Wait, so does that mean the water wasn’t always deadly?”
“Yes, in fact I think that only started a few years before I was hatched.” As I was walking, I opened my bag and started scrounging around for some kind of empty resealable container. I wanted to take a sample of the water back to Earth with me and see if I could figure out what it was, but I didn’t have anything usable. Just as I slung my backpack back over my shoulder, I saw what looked like some kind of dam made of sand, stone, mud, broken tree branches, and other assorted things that must have fallen into the stream. On one side, the water flowing into the dam was green, but on the other it looked almost normal again. “Okay Jake, you can cross along that water stop.”
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Suma’s POV
I watched Jake carefully walk across the water stop. To me, it seemed quite large, but when compared to Jake it seemed almost silly to describe it in such a way. In reality, Jake probably could have jumped across the length of the river, but it seemed too dangerous, so I led him to the nearest safe place I could see from my perch on the guiding tower. The guiding towers were the place all the masters were supposed to perch while guiding their familiars. There were three currently set up around the training ground. We were instructed that while we could give commands to the familiars while in the air, if we were to land anywhere other than a guiding tower we would be failed automatically.
“Okay Suma, which way now?” Jake asked after he crossed the stream. I refocused my attention to him and began looking for a safe path from where he was, to the end of the course.
“Do you see that large rock next to the trees with blue leaves?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Go there, then wait. I need to readjust to a better tower.” I took flight and went to the nearest tower opposite to where Jake was now. I needed a clearer view of his location and what he was walking into. After a moment, I was perched on the new tower, and guiding Jake again. While Jake walked, the instructor for this exercise landed on the perch beside mine.
“Cadet Suma, how is it coming?”
“It’s going well mam, Sentinel has avoided Delabi River and made it through all other obstacles.” I told her.
“Good, where is he now?”
“He is on his way to a clearing near the seventh obstacle.” I told her.
“He is making excellent progress then. I will leave you to it.” She said. Just as she was about to fly away, I thought about what Jake said/
“Mam, before you go, I have a question. Was this training ground built on ruins of some kind?”
“Actually yes.” She confirmed. “It was once the site of a city, before the ravaging anyway. How did you hear about that?”
“Sentinel told me mam, he said he found something in the tunnels that went under the poison forests.” I explained.
“What kind of something?”
“Runes, and something called concrete.”
