Chapter Twenty Four

  Arming Up

  The Unbound Vanguard lined up in front of Roman’s armory. Freya felt giddy at the chance to pick out anything she wanted from the stockpile he had built up over the years. Roman stood in front of several large lockers, each had one of their names written on the front in chalk.

  “These are where you can store your equipment. Each of you will get a bag that will act as a portal back to your locker. It will allow you to change equipment on the fly without getting weighed down.” Roman pointed to a simple leather bag hanging on the handle of each locker. “Grab the bag on your respective lockers.”

  Like bags of holding, kind of, almost, not really. It would be nice to have a few changes of clothes on hand, trekking around in week old stink didn’t sound particularly appealing. Freya grabbed her bag and opened her locker. It was empty aside from a number of hooks and pockets built into the walls. She put her hand into the bag and saw it feeling around in the locker. How would she be able to reach all the way to the bottom if she needed something down there?

  “This seems convenient and all, but grabbing something specific has to be a pain right?” Freya asked.

  “The bag has a sense of what you are trying to retrieve and will put your hand in the best spot for it.”

  Freya slid one of her knives into the bag. Her hand popped out immediately beside one of the side pockets perfectly sized for the knife. That was way too damn cool. With all the crazy shit she was constantly exposed to it was easy to take for granted what was possible in the Harbor. Even jumping through the Mario 64 like paintings had become a relatively mundane task for her.

  The rest of the group followed her lead, each of them took their own bag and tested putting some simple equipment inside. Seeing the group wave their hands about in their locker portals gave Freya pause.

  “If you can make portals like this, why don’t we travel using these bags instead of paying the Travel Agents?”

  “If I’ve been paying those leeches all this time for no reason I’m going to knock your teeth down your throat Roman,” Molly said.

  “It’s a little complicated.”

  Freya narrowed her eyes. “We aren’t stupid.”

  “I wasn’t saying-” Roman pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine. Basically, this is a trick of how one-way portals work. A one-way portal is just what it sounds like, you can go through, but you can’t go back. Most portals will collapse upon a person traveling through it. But, the person has to completely travel through in order for that to happen. So if you are just putting your hand in, the portal doesn’t count that as a person traveling through it. And since you are only partially through the portal, it keeps the gateway open, allowing you to pull your hand out.”

  That wasn’t complicated at all, but Freya decided to leave it. Roman seemed grumpy about something and she didn’t care to push him any further.

  “What about the one-way doors in Esselem? They don’t destroy themselves. Neither does the entrance to your pocket dimension in the tower.”

  “The doors in Esselem I have no explanation for. As far as my door in the tower goes, that is this dimension’s anchor point in the Harbor.”

  “An anchor point?”

  “I told you it’s complicated.”

  Molly slammed her locker door. “Jesus Roman just answer her, she can obviously handle it.”

  Freya smiled at that. It was probably the closest Molly had gotten to giving her a compliment, or saying anything nice really.

  Roman ran a hand through his hair. “An anchor point…It’s like the dimension’s front door. You can set one place in the realm where you can freely enter the pocket dimension.”

  “But you can get in through The Mind’s Mirror too?”

  “The rules often don’t apply to The Mind’s Mirror.”

  Freya shook her head. It would be a miracle if she figured out a way to keep all this straight. There was a kind of logic to the magic, but at the same time the arbitrary rules were just that. Arbitrary. Sometimes they could be ignored and sometimes those rules might as well have been carved into the fabric of the universe. Trying to understand every little nuance would probably drive her to insanity before she could reconcile all the inconsistencies.

  That is probably why people paid the Travel Agents so much. Convenience and not having to understand the inherently illogical was worth a few pages.

  “We are burning daylight,” Athena said, eying up the racks of equipment.

  “Alright.” Roman swallowed. Obviously a little uneasy about his stockpile getting raided. “Go for it.”

  Everyone dove in. Lorin seemed the most animated about this despite the fact he already had a powerful suit of armor, though Freya didn’t know what it actually did. His weapon, the copy of Kratos’ Leviathan Axe, was also more than enough for his purposes. He went straight for the weapon rack anyway. In seconds he held his prize high, Mjolnir.

  Lorin obviously planned on going for that from that start. Freya briefly considered it too. Flight, minor lightning control, it would have been useful. But having to wield the thing would have been a chore. That was so far beyond her fencing training that she probably would be better off without it.

  The still-open lockers quickly filled with equipment. Athena’s filled with all manner of potions and scrolls. She didn’t pick out a primary weapon. That made sense. She could summon a gigantic fire dragon at will so a sword probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. Though she did pick out a few wands. Freya walked toward Athena’s locker.

  This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “What are the wands for?” Freya asked.

  Athena slid one more potion into her bag. “Depends on the wand. But they all amplify magic in one form or another.”

  “You seemed plenty strong without them.”

  Athena smiled. “A little more firepower can’t hurt right? Here, take a look.”

  A black window with blinking green text like an old Apple II appeared in front of them accompanied by a tinny beeping noise. Text filled the screen with a thocky click to go along with each new character. So odd. If the Minister used the item description system would he see the information written out on paper?

  Item: The Elder Wand

  Description: A cheap recreation of The Elder Wand created by Esselem’s favorite terrorist, Roman Talyor. Rather than an all powerful magical artifact, this wand will provide only a minor boost to all spells cast with it in hand. Maybe Roman made this thing suck because he thinks J.K. Rowling should be burnt at the stake.

  Athena’s mouth hung open, as if she had just seen a three hundred pound man flash a box of kittens. “I don’t know why it’s written out like that.”

  “Like what? You don’t normally see the old computer screen? Mine is Windows XP based, so maybe-”

  “No. I like my DOS window. I mean the actual description. It looks like it was written by some bitter nerd who spends all his time on 4Chan.”

  “That’s what all my descriptions are like.”

  “That doesn’t sound right.”

  “Seriously.” Freya grabbed one of her trench knives. Her blue-trimmed white display appeared next to Athena’s.

  Item: The Bookworm’s Tsarist Trench Knife

  Description: A combat knife with a set of iron knuckles set into the handle. Standard issue in the Legions of the Bluffs. Developed by a man with serious childhood trauma who loves a good war crime or two. Stolen from the still-warm corpse of a mother of three by a psychotic Tolkien enthusiast who is always telling herself ‘she had to do it’. Spoiler alert. She didn’t.

  Freya quickly closed the window. That description was not the same as what it used to be. She didn’t know what it was, but this system was starting to really piss her off. Next time she saw the Gardener or Rep she was going to punch them in the teeth for encouraging its use.

  Athena just stood there, judging from the look on her face she read it. Great, that’s just what she needed, one more person in this group hating her.

  “Something is wrong. May I look at your page configuration?”

  “You can do that?” Freya asked.

  “Yes. May I?”

  “Go for it.”

  Athena swung her hands wide. The air tensed. A latticework of pages pulled out of Freya’s torso. It was so strange to see it visualized like this. There were her pages on earth manipulation, she roughly estimated two hundred of her three hundred eighteen pages had been dedicated to that aspect of her setup.

  There was no way she was counting all the pages right now, but it seemed about right. The pages were linked together with thick spectral lines. A second much smaller group of pages hovered next to the earth manipulation section. This was for the improvements to her physical abilities, enhanced strength, durability, speed. A third, much smaller group hovered next to that, only two pages. This was what what allowed her to see these descriptions. Lastly about forty of her pages floated around aimlessly, not connected to anything. This was her rainy day fund, in case she needed something on the fly.

  “Oh dear,” Athena said. “You haven’t been taking Roman’s advice on page manipulation have you?”

  Freya’s cheeks flushed. “I’ve been just doing it on my own mostly. Nobody taught me how to do this.”

  “So you have been taking his advice. Fool of a man. Always insisting everyone should figure this out on their own.” Athena leaned in and started plucking at the loose pages. “So much extra. With how few pages you have, it would be wise to not let anything go to waste.” She shook her head and turned toward the two pages dedicated to the description system. “No matter, I can help you with that later. Let’s see. Crude connection, but it works.” Athena tugged on a line so thin Freya didn’t even notice it. It connected to the floating pages and led out through Roman’s door and somewhere beyond. “Nothing strange there…Yes. I see now. You have something else here.”

  A black line appeared beside the pages, thick and gnarled like the root of a tree. It followed the other line out of the room. A small black branch sprouted off and connected straight to Athena’s chest. The old woman formed a blade of shimmering white glass and sliced straight through the the branch hooked into her. Her description window went blank, then started to repopulate with that mechanical keyboard click.

  Item: The Elder Wand

  Description: An imitation of the Elder Wand from J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, crafted by Roman Talyor with assistance from Parlor of Nowhere. This wand provides a modest boost to all page-based magic, the equivalent of an additional twenty pages of power.

  Athena shuddered like she had just been touched by a snake. “That’s better.”

  Freya stepped closer to Athena’s window. She could feel herself turning green at the sight of the actually useful information presented in the sorceress’ screen. If Freya’s worked like this she would use the damn thing all the time.

  She stepped back. “Okay, do me now.”

  Athena shook her head. “Sorry love, can’t. It is impossible to mess with another’s pages.”

  “But my pages were messing with yours.”

  “Because we were both hitching into the same page network. Whatever bug you’ve picked up is no doubt from there. I was able to sever the connection on my side. If you spend some extra time on your pages you may be able to remove whatever is corrupting your system. Though I would caution against it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because while you may not get firm numbers from your altered system. It gives you important social information. We can’t see descriptions of people, and usually these item descriptions are pretty terse when it comes to how a person was involved in its creation. But yours, it told me that you had killed a woman, and it told me Roman’s political leanings in the Source. I’ve never seen that before, and I’ve been around the block.”

  Freya looked at that thick root latched onto her pages with a rock in her stomach. Even if it was useful, it felt like she was walking around with a big tick attached to her neck.

  Athena put a warm hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep close to you. I’ll keep an eye on your pages. If something is fishy I’ll be able to call it out.”

  Freya rested her hand on Athena’s. Despite how much this discovery unsettled her, it was nice to have someone looking after her. Especially someone as powerful and kind as Athena. Now it was only Molly she had to worry about.

  The others were just finishing up selecting their items. Their lockers were filled to the brim. Zora seemed to focus more on various enchanted weapons, while Molly had stuffed several thick cloaks into her locker. Roman looked as if he was about to be sick. Freya stepped toward the armor rack. She slid down a pair of brown cuffed boots not too different from the ones she wore now. A feather single feather was embossed into the sides. When she tapped the symbol the boots shimmered purple.

  Item: Leather Boots (Feather Falling IV)

  Description: A set of leather boots handcrafted by a lonely old man who’s only joy in life is selling knockoff Minecraft merch to other equally lonely losers.

  Freya sighed. “Some actual information would have been nice.”

  Her display twitched, then typed out an additional few lines

  These boots absorb most shock incurred from falling from a great height. Happy now?

  Freya blinked. “Yes, I am actually.”

  You’re welcome.

  Whatever was behind these descriptions could hear her? That was both nice, and horrifying. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that whatever was typing this shit out was bitter and angry. Probably not the best entity to have following her around. Freya closed out the window. A problem for another time. She had been saying that far too much in recent days.

  The boots slid onto Freya’s feet as if they were made for her. She jumped. It felt as if she had just jumped on a pile of half cooked marshmallows. This would work. She eyed up the rest of the equipment. She took what looked like a cartoon bomb from one of the shelves and stuffed it into her bag. Time to arm up. If Sulivar wanted to see what they were capable of, Freya would damn well show him.