Bootstrapping Book 1

by Tersin22

An insert wakes up on the first day of her new life in a world of magic, with none of her own. No advantages, no starting place, knowing nothing but that she's out gunned at every turn and power is out there to grab. One way or another she'll drag her way to safety and arcane power, over the bodies of everybody in her way if she must.

36. Excalibur Blessing

This... is not going well.

I have no idea how long I've been fighting at this point, feels like forever. The skeletons are never ending, I'm beginning to suspect that the ones I destroy just get back up when I'm not looking. There were only a couple hundred people living in the colony, and I have to have destroyed at least that many skeletons by now. The plants are taking less and less time to start trying to ensnare me. I think at first the island had to burrow roots underground to wherever I was standing to try and get me. Now though, most of the colony has been covered, so no matter where I am if I hold still for more than a few moments I'm fighting off overly friendly plants too.

And the golems...

The boneitaurs keep increasing in number. Every time I manage to get rid of one, two more pop up. It's a little like what I imagine fighting a hydra must be like, only there's no easy solution like fire to keep it from happening.

There's five of the damn things running around now.

Part of me is proud that I've managed to remove four of them.

Most of me wishes that I'd just kept evading the first one so I wouldn't have so many problems now.

I slip around the thrust of one golem, duck under the bladed arms of a second and slide between the legs of a third. Popping to my feet again I take off running, trying to place my feet at least a little unpredictably so the island can't anticipate where to start grabbing with plants before I arrive. That had happened once, while I may not be a Japanese school girl it still wasn't something I ever want to experience again.

Behind me the three piles of animate plant and bone I've managed to avoid turn to follow me. I've got a little bit of time before they can line themselves up for a charge. Outside of charging they don't move too quickly. The island tried a more nimble construct, something designed to keep up with my acrobatic self, once. The thing was in the air way too much and I managed to launch it off the island almost immediately. Since then every single bone pile that's come after me has been large, tough, and fast, only in a straight line.

Like the two remaining golems maneuvering to cut off my escape from the other three. One is stomping towards me from straight ahead, the other is moving at a charge to intercept where I'll be if I don't slow down or deviate course.

If I do neither, the two of them should reach me at about the same time.

I do neither.

Just as the charging bone construct is about to hit me I pluck my mental bow string shooting myself forward just a little bit faster than I had been moving. The sudden acceleration combined with a quick spin let the rushing minothing blow right past me without slowing down.

Using the inertia of my spin, Sclamhaire swats the second golem's arms aside, letting them slide past me into the ground. I slide my front foot forward, cocking my arm back and pivoting Sclamhaire, using the bone monster's arm as the fulcrum, until Sclamhaire's point is lined up with the center of it's chest.

Using my entire body I thrust my sword forward. Sclamhaire sinks into the thickest part of the thing's aura, devouring it and slowing at the same time. Until she finally stops with her point just resting against the plate of bone and vine that makes up the monster's torso. The moment my sword touches bone I yank my mental bowstring back and release it with the same thought. Sclamhaire launches out of my loosened grip and now, already through the protective aura, punches straight through the golem's chest.

Sclamhaire destroys the golem, consuming it's animating energies just like it's one of the lesser skeletons. The flash of light and heat from Sclamhaire's pommel gem burns away the vegetation that rise from the ground to grab me. An omnidirectional pulse of TK scatters the remains of the golem far and wide to keep the island from putting it back together easily.

Two more resonant roars sound out across the colony from opposite sides. A cry which is quickly answered by the four constructs still here.

For a moment the battle pauses again as I trudge to reclaim Sclamhaire from where she stands, proud and upright in the ground, her pommel gem shining like a beacon from the island's mana. I use the quiet moment to savor the heat she produces, and for a moment I can escape the cold of the island's snow storm. The constructs stomp their way into something like a firing arc, presumably so they can charge at me without having to worry about hitting each other.

I'd gotten a pair of them to do that earlier.

It had been hilarious to watch, though not overly damaging to the necromantic abominations.

With a groan I pick Sclamhaire up, and lay her flat across my shoulder. I'm exhausted. My physical endurance may for all practical purposes be infinite while in battle, but my mental endurance isn't. I have no idea how long I've been fighting these things, but it seems like forever, and I'm not sure how much longer I can keep it up. It's getting harder to focus, my mind wandering and I'm losing moments when I'm not in combat. Finding myself fighting in new places around the colony and not being entirely sure how I got there.

No choice but to keep going though.

I turn to face the enemy, and let out a short shriek as light blasts into my face. I can't help but flinch backwards, throwing up an arm to cover my eyes. Knowing even as I do, that I just fell for this new trap the island has come up with, and I'd be smashed into the ground like a tent peg any moment now.

Any moment now...

...

I crack an eye to look around and find the island covered in heatless bronze and brass colored flame.

###

The sun came up while I wasn't paying attention, and everywhere the sunlight touches the tarnished gold mana burns. The storm clouds vanish like flash paper held over a candle. The skeletons ignite, physically unharmed even as the animating mana is scoured away by dawn's light. The bone golems last somewhat longer with more mana supporting them. What's burned away is replaced fast enough to keep the golems going for a little while longer. They stagger towards me, bone and vine sloughing off of them as they try desperately to reach me before they come apart completely, finally not having the mana to hold themselves together. The forests have flames running through them like somebody started a forest fire. Which I suppose in a way somebody had.

Minutes after the sun rose, the process the pure sunlight started, finishes. Everything that the light could touch forcefully returned to a more natural mana balance. Which isn't to say that the Genius Loci is defeated. Anywhere the sunlight can't reach is still saturated with the tarnished gold mana.

Cautiously I use the toe of my boot to scrape a shallow hole in the ground, just moving aside some surface layers. I'm rewarded with a brief puff of copper fire as mana saturated ground is exposed to sunlight. Slowly I turn in a circle taking in my surroundings. Everything hasn't quite gone back to normal. Some of the skeletal mob that had been chasing me all night has survived by hiding in the shadows of the colony buildings, but it's clearly a temporary reprieve. More importantly, they can't get to me as long as I stay fully in the sunlight. Everything else is still creepy, but only in the normal ghost town sort of way that it had been when I'd first arrived the day before.

Certain that there's nothing out here that's going to attack me, my legs fold underneath me dropping me onto my ass in the dirt. A moment later I give up entirely, flopping onto my back with an audible and long groan.

I'm so tired.

Even if I can't physically get exhausted, my brain so wants a nap. I can't though. Even if I fall asleep in direct sunlight I wouldn't put it past the island to grow something up through my back.

I'm so very tempted to just rest my eyes for a bit. But after the longest battle of my life there's no way I'm going to stay conscious if I do. Or if I stay laying here for too much longer.

So I'll just take a moment.

Catch my breath.

A yawn big enough to make my jaw pop tells me that if I don't get moving soon... I won't...

###

I wake up with the sun high overhead, and spearing into my eyes. With a groan I pull myself to my feet. The aches I can feel rapidly fading are highly instructive as to why one really shouldn't sleep in armor.

I really need to figure out that soul storage thing.

Though I'm betting that falling asleep in my armor is the only thing that kept the island from getting me during my unwilling nap. Though I see no signs of it having tried which confuses the hell out of me.

Climbing to my feet I stretch myself out, letting the last few twinges fade away while also trying to ignore the very different ache in my middle.

God damn I'm hungry.

I don't have much hope of finding anything, but I head over to my poor unused campsite to see if anything edible survived. It actually takes a few minutes to figure out where I'd set up, so much of the colony's topography has changed during the night. Buildings have collapsed, new hills have appeared. Trees have fallen and other plants have achieved full growth. My campsite when I find it has actually become a full blown pond.

From what I can see, one complete with fish.

I have no idea how or why, but those are definitely freshwater fish of a sort I wouldn't be surprised to find native to the region.

...

I narrow my eyes at the pond and after a moment a snap of my TK launches one of the fish out of the water and into my hand. A quick smack against my armored skirt kills it quickly, and I look to getting a few more. I don't know what the island was thinking putting these here, maybe it thought I'd be dead already, but I'm starving and not about to look a gift fish in the mouth. So a few moments later I have two more fish.

I like to imagine that I can feel the island glaring at me.

This is revenge for my campsite ya geological jackass!

###

I know next to nothing about cooking over a campfire, but fish aren't hard. Just gut them and keep them over the coals until the skin starts to peel. The fire itself is started by a lighter that I manage to recover and restore enough to light.

At least once.

It takes me a couple of hours to light, cook, and eat everything, but afterwards I'm feeling much better about the world. More importantly I'm ready to get back to work. I've lost most of the day between the nap brought on by a night of constant high stress and the subsequent adrenaline crash, and the meal.

Now though I'm fed, rested, and have the time to actually figure some things out.

I feel pretty certain that the Excalibur fragment is still on the island. The Exorcist that brought it here certainly didn't leave with it, and supposedly nobody else that has ever made it to the island has ever left. So they certainly didn't take it.

Then there's the mana the island uses.

Gold is typically the color of holy power, as demonstrated by the angel feather that Mia had gotten her talons on somehow. So the tarnished gold to me implies that the mana I'm seeing is holy power, just... corrupted somehow. As weird as that idea is from the perspective of mana. Definitely not balanced properly any more at the very least.

In any case, a Genius Loci, especially one that has nobody living on it and with a reputation like Roanoke, shouldn't have access to holy mana. Which if I remember correctly is produced from the worship or concentrated belief of mortals. It seems like most of the locals try to think about the island as little as possible. Genius Loci should be using mana in its most 'raw' state. The way it occurs naturally for lack of a better term.

The only way I can think off the top of my head, and it might very well be wishful thinking, that the state I see here could come about, is if there's something to act as a converter of sorts. Something to turn raw mana into what I'm seeing. That and the tarnished gold mana reminds me a lot of the feeling I got off the fallen angel feather Mia got me.

So somewhere on this island is a sword pumping out corrupted holy magic that the island is then using to do things like animate the dead.

I just have to find it.

Which fortunately, I think I have an easy way to do.

###

The hardest part is finding a place to draw the script.

Bone chalk is easy.

Well, it's not really chalk, but bone dust works just as well. There's a certain cathartic, visceral satisfaction in the process of collecting the bones of the skeletons that hounded me all night, and grinding them into powder. With my strength reducing them to dust isn't hard. Containing the dust is a bit trickier, but the cloth from my ruined tent will still work just fine for this. Fishing it out of the pond is a little tricky, but some quick work with my athame gets me a piece big enough for my purposes.

But a place to draw the script is harder.

Anyplace outside is covered in grass or other plant life. The houses are crooked, anything but level, and after last night's fun anything but structurally sound. I'm honestly shocked that any part of them is still standing. Not to mention that if I try anything inside of one of them there's too much of a chance that I'll end up too close to somewhere the sun hasn't reached and, the island will take a pot shot at me.

No, I'll need something else.

My eye drifts back to my carefully constructed campfire. I had cleared the dry grass that covers most of the interior of the colony away from the circle of stones stolen from the colony well for my fire. I made very sure that I'd done everything necessary to keep the fire from spreading because the colony is a tinderbox.

On the other hand... how much do I care if I hurt the island?

I mean at this point?

###

For the second time in a single day the island burns.

This time, instead of the metaphysical flames produced by the purging of corrupted power, these are far more literal flames. Pale yellow fire spreads the way only a grass fire can. Hot and quick, they rush through the colony leaving black ash in their wake. My armor provides excellent protection against the hot fast flames, as intense as they are, for the brief time I'm standing in the fire.

What it does a poorer job of protecting me from is the smoke.

The hacking cough I develop within minutes is wet and nasty as my body desperately tries to expel the smoke particulate. Globs of black phlegm come out of my mouth as I hunch over, staying as low to the ground as I can trying to find clear air.

This is not one of my better ideas.

Behind me I can hear the already compromised frames of the wooden buildings begin to collapse as they catch and burn. Those piles of ancient wood will burn for a while, the grass fire though has almost run its course. Or it's at least far enough away from me to no longer interfere with what I need to do.

Still coughing I lean over the lip of the well to retrieve the square of tent fabric that I stashed there to keep it safe from my brilliant plan.

Okay, to be fair to myself, my plan did exactly what it needed to. The area around the well in the center of the colony is free of grass and largely level. As perfect a work space as I can hope to find out here. I just underestimated how bad the smoke would be. I thought that in the wide open area of the colony square with nothing to contain it, the smoke wouldn't be a problem.

I also overestimated how effective my regeneration would be in this circumstance. Troll healing is unrivaled in the realm of natural healing when it comes to trauma. For foreign contaminants not accompanied by a wound? It's not nearly as good, as it turns out.

Still, with the way things have worked out, I can still do what I need to.

I pace out the space I'll need with a little extra just to be on the safe side. Then carefully arranging the cloth I start drawing out my pressure Script like one would frost a cake. I just have to go slowly so my constant coughing doesn't make me miss drawing something.

Who knows what could go wrong if I scrawl where I should scribble because I can't clear the gunk out of my lungs.

I really hope that Pua has an easy fix for smoke inhalation.

###

It takes me a couple of hours to lay out the Script. I go slow and take my time, since not only am I using an unfamiliar medium, but correcting any mistakes I make will be the next thing to impossible. My persistent cough makes mistakes far too likely if I give Murphy any chance at all.

Still, by the end of my careful shaking bone dust off my folded cloth and into the right symbols for several hours, I'm left with an aching back from bending over and a Script that I'm certain enough of to use. A careful hop takes me to the center of the circle where I settle in and try to take a deep breath to start singing the Script to life.

I nearly hack up a lung when I fail at breathing.

It takes me far too much effort and trial and error to learn how to time my coughing fits to places in the Script story where they won't cause problems. Finally though I manage to get the Script to flare to life, drawing in the ambient mana in the area and compressing it to the point that I can simply let it in.

My senses expand explosively, their range increasing to cover almost the entire island and their resolution improving to the point that I can track every eddy and current of how the island cycles its power through the earth. For a few minutes I just take it in, reveling in being so connected to everything. I can't indulge for long though, I wasn't exactly low on mana when the fight ended. It won't take me long to fill up again, so I only have till then to find what I'm looking for.

So I narrow my focus from just taking in everything, to looking for the largest beacon of power I can sense.

The first thing I find is a deep thrumming pulse far below me. A powerful torrent of naturally balanced mana that passes directly under the center of the island. A ley line, a rushing river of the planet's life energy. An example of my own mana network writ large.

There's probably something profound I could take from that, but philosophy isn't really my strong suit and I don't have the time.

Following the ley line though, I find something that feels like nothing so much as a reverse waterfall. A narrow thread of mana, compared to the ley line, pulled upwards into the island's sphere of influence. Below me, though not nearly as deep as the ley line, I can feel the ley line mana meet something else. A pulsing, off balance beacon that takes in natural mana and pumps out vast amounts of tarnished gold power.

That's what I'm looking for!

Now where is it, and how do I get there?

From what I can feel it's off to my left, which would mean somewhere deeper inland on the island. Also it's below me, which is a problem. Clearly there's some way to access whatever cave or pit the island has stashed the Excalibur in. The island had to get it down there in the first place somehow. The question is where is the entrance...?

I open my eyes and turn, coughing a couple of times, to look at the colony well.

I had kicked a skeleton down there in the chaos of last night's battle. I can sort of recall hearing enough echos to indicate a fairly large cave system as the skeleton clattered off the walls of the well. I can't recall any details of how big it is, or how the cave system is laid out. I was more than a little distracted by the ongoing grand meleem and fighting for my life to really commit an incidental like that to my memory.

My network begins to ache, and I hurriedly shut the pressure Script down.

Carefully I climb to my feet and head over to the well, deliberately scuffing my feet through the parts of the Script which are my inventions, and as far as I know, still secret. Reaching the well, I lean against the partially collapsed wall and try not to hack my lungs out. Once I get my breathing back under control, I take one of the larger loose stones from the well and drop it down the shaft.

Listening carefully, I try to get information from the sound of stone bouncing off stone. Which turns out to not be a lot. I'm not an expert in sound, but something about the specific noise of the rock knocking into other rocks doesn't create echos that carry very well.

I try to sigh, but instead cough a couple more times.

At least that seems to be getting better.

I manage a deep enough breath to let out a shriek at the highest note I can hear straight down the well. I figure bats must use incredibly high pitched sounds for a reason. Given I stole my hearing from one, if it worked for them it'd work for me.

The sound does work remarkably well.

I don't get enough information back to get a clear map of the cave system. I do get enough to know that it extends more than far enough to reach where I felt the potential Excalishard. I'm willing to bet that the cave system used to be a cistern, given that it has a well connected to it. Probably dried up either because of the native shamans directly, or indirectly by way of the Genius Loci. They were trying to get the colonists to go away after all. A lack of water will tend to do that.

I look down the well again and groan. Am I really going to do this?

Climb inside a Genius Loci that would really like to kill me? Where I'm surrounded by its power and there's no hope of a timely save by sunlight?

I cough again.

Yeah, yeah I am.

God dammit.

Cough.

###

I may be about to literally jump into the belly of the beast, but that doesn't mean I have to be stupid about it. I really would like to have all sorts of spelunking equipment and an expert in cave exploring with me going down there, but that's not going to happen. I'm pretty much stuck with what I've got on me, and my own powers.

Which still provides me with, if not an ideal answer, an answer nonetheless.

When I vault over the edge of the well and plummet a rather impressive distance straight down before landing, I make no sound on impact. Because I'm not here. My invisibility to date has been perfect, except for one instance when the Lady of the Lake spotted me, but Vivain doesn't count. So I'm counting on it working on whatever sense a sentient island uses as well as it's worked on everything else.

Still it's not something I can keep up for too long, burns through mana too quickly. So I keep Sclamhaire unsheathed and in my hand for supplemental mana. I carefully don't let her touch the walls or floor of the cave, afraid that the island will notice the mana being stolen. There's more than enough power in the air though, that I get a fairly steady stream both from Sclamhaire and my armor.

I still use up mana faster than I gain it, but I have hours now instead of minutes.

Sight becomes worthless as a sense almost immediately as I venture away from the well and into the cave system. My mana senses are also once again saturated into near uselessness. My hearing works perfectly though. I may not be able to map out an entire cave system in one go from one end of it, but I can get a remarkably clear image of my immediate surroundings. I can also spot which turns lead to dead ends pretty much without effort, so my progress is relatively quick.

The stone walls sound rough, the echos off of them sounding fuzzy for lack of a better term. The walls narrow and widen without warning, though most of the time I'm able to walk upright, even if I have to turn sideways. Both stalactites and stalagmites are common features that fill any larger cavern, of which there are more than a few. While the cistern may be dry for human purposes, it really isn't anything like actually dry. Water rolls down the walls and drips from the ceiling into shallow pools. Each of these spots is almost like a shaft of light to my sonar. Regular predictable noise coming often enough to make my image of the areas where they appear far clearer than the rest of the caves. I even find myself acting like they're light, I tend to gravitate towards these areas and I'm reluctant to leave. It's difficult to make myself return to the 'darkness' of the quieter caves and tunnels in a way that actual darkness hasn't made me act in a while. Every so often I'll hear a chirp or something scrape along the walls. Cave fauna, crickets and spiders that have evolved in the darkness move about, scattering and hiding from any unexpected sound the way their surface cousins would flee from a turned on light. None of them seem to have been altered in any way by the island though, and I've seen no signs of giant fantasy spiders...

That's a thought I actually managed to avoid having until right this moment. Thank you brain, I didn't need that sleep I was planning to have ever again.

Not that spiders bother me any more than any other kind of bug, but something about facing down a giant one in complete darkness freaks me out a little more than just a giant spider. The close confines of the caves which would limit my high mobility fighting style don't help either.

Still no sign of giant spiders.

No point in worrying about them.

I cough, check my mana levels, and push on.

###

Time and I have been having an acrimonious relationship recently, as I once again have no idea how much of it has passed. I know it hasn't been days or weeks or anything, but hours could still be a problem. I really don't want to have to fight through everything Roanoke has at its disposal again if the sun's gone down up top. I have no way of knowing though.

Fortunately, I seem to be coming to the end of my trip. Or at least the halfway point.

I come out of a narrow crevice that I manage to only just fit through. My armor scrapes against the stone silently thanks to my glamor. Glamor that I almost lose three or four times moving through that crack in the stone.

Really pushing oneself through the crevasse is more than enough to give anybody sane, claustrophobia.

I wonder what it says about me that the idea of going back through it to get out doesn't bother me?

The chamber I enter into is the first sign I've seen of something that is obviously deliberately made by the island since it became conscious. I don't really count the bone golems top side, those were soldiers thrown together at need.

This is a permanent structure.

The chamber is an almost perfect sphere. The walls are still rough, nothing has been polished, but I bet one could still measure pi to a remarkable number of decimals off this place. The idea of a sphere falls apart at the center of the room. And this is a room, far too deliberate to be a cave. From the top and bottom of the sphere extend two narrow needles of stone. The stalactite and stalagmite meet in what I'm betting is the exact center of the sphere. Between them a blazing beacon of tarnished gold is suspended. The thing is pumping out so much power that it really ought to be producing visible light. Why it's not, I have no...

...

I open my eyes, having closed them at some point in the absolute darkness of the caves without noticing, and find that it is in fact shedding visible light. A harsh, sickly-golden glow pours forth from the center of the room illuminating everything quite well. The stone of the room has become the same wrong gold color of the power, having been soaked in it for centuries by now. The stalactite and stalagmite might actually be gold from the color of them. What really draws the eye though is the beacon.

The sword.

What the Excalibur looked like when it was made I have no idea, but I doubt it was like this. The blade is warped and twisted, the metal having bubbled in some places and the entire thing is streaked with black. The hilt is covered by a thin shell of stone, mini stalactites fall from the cross guard which seems to droop, the accumulated effect like melted wax.

The entire thing is warped and damaged in a way that I can't even begin to explain.

Fortunately, I don't have to!

Carefully, I make my way around the sphere until the Excalibur is between me and the exit. I make sure that Sclamhaire is secure in her scabbard and that my athame is unlikely to escape its sheath. Then I get a running start, and with a telekinetic boost basically tackle the Excalibit, ripping it free of the stone pillar it had been a part of for the last few centuries.

My glamor is broken, but that hardly matters now. There's no way the island could have missed me stealing it's holy sword.

I hit the ground and roll to my feet smoothly, and break into a run for the exit as quick as I can. Which turns out to be the right choice. As soon as I break the sword free, the room begins to shake. First dust, then pebbles, and soon enough I have no doubt larger stones, start falling from the ceiling.

I fling myself into the crevice that leads into the sphere chamber with a recklessness that would have seen me injured if not for my armor. That claustrophobia that I didn't have is showing up now, as I can feel the stone my chest is pressed against start to tremble and inch closer. Deep inside the stone I can hear rock cracking and breaking as something, I'm betting roots, slither through them, breaking up the formerly solid stone, making it shift to my detriment.

At first I think the crevice getting narrower is just my imagination. Then the amount of mana my armor is feeding me begins to slowly increase. By the time I reach the other end of the narrow passage it's gotten so tight that it actually grips my armor, holding half of me in place as the pressure continues to build.

I'm only saved by an instinctive snap of TK popping me free of the stone like a champagne cork. I hit the ground hard, scramble back to my feet and take off running as best I can in the pitch black. The floor is trembling, making footing unpredictable, and the now constant rain of pebbles and larger stones means my sonar again has too much in the air to be clear. Not to mention what the dust is doing to my cough.

I dodge around larger falling stones as I retrace my steps back to the well. That might have been a problem, except that in this environment I can actually sort of follow my own scent trail. With it being the only trail here, and not needing to figure out how it ages everything is simpler. Only one passage will ever have my scent in it, and that's the direction I need to go.

After only a few moments wooden spears start erupting out of the stone both above and below me. Each of them weakening the structural integrity of the cave system. Something which seems to be getting weaker and weaker from moment to moment anyway.

I dive forward, only just beating a falling boulder to the entrance to a tunnel I need to go down. I start to my feet only to get punched in the back by something that slams me flat against the tunnel floor. Half panicking I swing the sword at the spear I can hear emerging from the roof and keeping my pinned to the ground, trying to force its way through my back plate with brute force.

It's only after my wild swing has made contact that I remember that Sclamhaire is safely sheathed on my back, the sword in my hand is the Excalibur. The holy blade strikes the wood and a scream fills the air. The wood rots and twists on itself as though diseased. I don't wait to make sense of what the supposed Excalibur Blessing just did, and instead scramble back to my feet and resume running for my life.

Tunnels collapse behind me as I run through them. Larger caves shed boulders and stones like rain as I cross them. Anywhere neither of those things happen, and increasingly even where they do as I approach the exit, wooden spears jab free of the stone at every angle and roots reach out to grab me once again.

The omnidirectional telekinetic pulse is quite possibly the best technique ever. It pushes angry plants and large rocks away from me with equal facility. It's also the only way I make it through the last large chamber. Boulders are shifted just out of the way, and smaller rocks are flung far and wide from my frantic and nearly continuous pulses. Just ahead of me is the last tunnel before I reach the well...

I nearly pause but don't have the time. Crisscrossing the tunnel to the well, which I barely fit through upright the first time, are now dozens of wooden spears. Spears emerge from the stone and vanish into the opposite side of the tunnel, forming a latticework of thick mana enhanced wooden beams blocking the length of the tunnel. If I had the time I could maneuver through them like a Hollywood thief dancing through a laser grid.

Note to self, I have fantastic body control and I'm remarkably flexible for having troll joints. See if I can dance through a laser grid.

Second note to self, find something to murder to fix my flexibility issues.

I don't have time though, and so instead, pull my mental bowstring way, way back, and then let it go, launching myself down the tunnel at a truly stupid rate of speed. My armor lives up to my vague subconscious hopes, and protects me as the wooden beams explode into splinters and wood chips one after another as I blow through them like a living cannonball. I'm sure I take some damage during the trip. But the mana absorbed from the impacts is hopefully more than enough for my regeneration to ensure the injuries I don't have time to notice won't impede me all that much.

I hit the wall of the well hard enough to crack the stone. Before I can even begin falling, I again telekinetically launch myself, this time straight up. Or mostly straight. I pop out of the well like a ping pong ball out of an air cannon. I get high enough into the air to see the coast, and hang long enough to note that the sun is low in the sky, before plummeting back to the ground, fortunately not back down the well, with a significant thud.

The impact drives the air violently out of my lungs. Which in turn set loose all the coughing that I managed to suppress while fleeing for my life underground. I cough, and choke, and hack up a truly disgusting few wads of black gunk. Once again I'd love to lay here and wallow, but my lot in life seems to be to keep going even when anybody sane would call it a day.

My armor almost seems to warm slightly as I harden my resolve, and I slowly drag myself to my feet. The island I'm on is still trying to kill me, and now I think I might have made it personal. The Excalibur in my hand looks even worse in daylight. The black streaks marring the twisted and mangled blade look almost greasy, and very much like something I'd never want to touch. No matter how long the pole. The partially melted hilt feels almost spongy, and I'm so glad that my gauntlets are full coverage so I don't accidentally touch it.

Still coughing, I stagger my way towards the dock. The ground shaking under me more than convincing me that daylight or not, I don't want to be on this island any longer than I have to be. Never mind if the sun actually goes down. I doubt I'd survive in my current state.

I manage to make it out of the colony palisade quickly enough, behind me the remaining wreckage still burning merrily. Fortunately it seems that the fire hadn't spread past the palisade. Which doesn't surprise me overly much, as the rest of the island couldn't be more different from the dry and dead state of the colony itself. A fast fire like the grass fire I set off in the colony wouldn't last long enough to really catch the rest of the far more lush greenery ablaze.

The problem of course, is that the island can use those still living plants to try and do me in.

Which it does. I stagger down the path to the docks, the faint tugging that I felt on my way to the colony has been replaced with blatant grasping. Still coughing, I skip to the side to avoid a falling tree branch, and then have to dive forward to avoid a falling tree. Vines attempt to trip me, bushes try to worm their way through the theoretical seams of my armor.

Through all of this the ground continues to shake with increasing violence. The ground cracks and parts of the path almost crumble out from underneath me. Only frantic and reflexive use of TK keeps me from falling back into the collapsing caverns.

I hit the ground again, really need to either stop doing this or figure out how to land, and tumble for several feet before the sound of what I'm rolling over changes. The sound of hard packed dirt replaced with the sound of rotting wood.

With a grunt I manage to lift my head, and see the sea before me. The wind shifts and the scent of salt water hits me in the face like a mallet. The gentle lap of waves also provided a rather odd subtle counterpoint to the continued rumbling of the shaking island.

The old fishing ship in the distance though, is the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.

With a grunt I haul myself to my feet one last time, coughing all the way. Breathing as well as I can, I break into a run. The docks had already begun to collapse when I arrived, they barely held my weight now. Still sticking to one edge, and trying to only step on support beams, I manage to make it to the end of the wooden pier, and leap as hard and as far as I can.

I can jump almost two stories straight up. I have no idea how far that translates to horizontally, but it wouldn't be anywhere nearly far enough to get me to the fishing boat. Which is why at the apex of my jump I telekinetically launch myself again as hard as I can. The acceleration is less than comfortable, something that had gotten lost in the adrenaline rush of the previous few days until now.

Still, if this is what flying is going to be like when I get my wings, I can't wait. The wing rushes past me, almost relaxing, the way white noise can be. The view is also spectacular, the sun just beginning to approach the horizon clouds beginning to bleed to orange and pink. The sounds of sea birds wondering what I'm doing up here with them, and in the distance I like to imagine that I can hear Roanoke shrieking in frustration at my escape.

I'm getting closer to the fishing boat, and beginning to descend. A process far less pleasant than ascending or the moment of hang time at the top. Still I'm in line with the fishing boat and should...

I'm still too high.

I'm going to miss the boat, aren't I?

I over shoot the boat by a good thirty to forty feet, and hit the ocean like a cannonball. The cold water is actually almost pleasant for a moment. Then it decidedly isn't. I frantically roll onto my back as I bob to the surface, thankful again that for me, my armor has no weight. I ache everywhere, though that might just be in my head. I certainly feel like I've been through the wringer.

I float there and stare at the slowly darkening sky, clutching the Excalibur in one hand. If I lose it by dropping it after all I'd been through to recover it, I'd never let myself live it down. Never mind anybody else.

After a few minutes the fishing boat pulls up next to me and the face of the old fisherman leans over the side to look down at me, "Ya all right there miss?" I just groan at him, to which he nods, "Believe the stories about the island now?" I cough and glare. I never disbelieved the stories about the island, I just thought I could handle it. Given I'm here and alive with the Excalibur, clearly I was right, "Need a hand there?"

"Or something." I croak out.

He nods again, "I'll get the boat hook then."

Wait... What?