Chapter 462: Food

Bruce dispelled the floating open. He examined his hand. The ink had returned cleanly to him; the energy spent on the word was significant but not catastrophic. He estimated, from feel, that he had used about ten percent of his reserves on open. A small word, single concept, applied to a small target. The cost scaled with the size of the word and the size of the effect, almost certainly.

Writing die on an alpha would probably empty him.

Writing die on a city would probably kill him before the word completed.

But within those limits, between the small useful words and the impossible words, there was an enormous middle ground he had not yet begun to explore. Words like bind, hold, quiet, sleep, strong, slow, break, seal. Each one a potential construct, each one with a cost, each one with applications he could not yet name.

He understood, suddenly and clearly, what the old soul at the orb had been failing to measure. What the orb had been overloading on. His talent was not a talent for shaping ink. His talent was a talent for imposing meaning on reality through written language. Ink was just the medium. Language was the actual power.

His soul talent’s name was [Sanare Veritatem] , to restore truth, to heal truth.

To rewrite what is, into what should be.

He filed this. It was too large to think about while standing in a dungeon. He would think about it tonight. Or tomorrow. Or never. But he filed it.

"Let’s keep hunting," he said.

"Are you sure?" Theron said.

"I’m sure. The discovery doesn’t change today’s work. Today’s work is essence, points, and finding an alpha. The work doesn’t change. Only what I know about my talent has changed."

Kael nodded slowly. He was still looking at Bruce with the careful attention of a man who had just rebalanced a previous estimate. He did not say anything.

They went back to hunting.

The alpha did not come for them today.

They hunted for four hours. They cleared seven more clusters and four more roller packs. They went past the fourth split into the chamber the B-rank guard had mentioned , and she was right, the chamber held a much larger crab cluster than the ones near the entrance, twelve crabs in a dense formation that took the three of them twenty minutes to clear. The cores from that cluster alone were worth several hundred points.

But no alpha showed up.

They had known going in that an alpha would not be guaranteed. The B-rank guard had told them as much. Bruce had built the hunt around regular yield rather than alpha hope, and they hit their regular yield comfortably , when they came out of the portal in the late afternoon, the senior clerk’s familiar table at the Guild gave them a haul value just under the previous day’s, even without an alpha.

Soul Points: 1,089

After paying for the alpha meal in advance , the old soul had set up a small account system for them, sixty points per person tonight, a hundred and eighty across the three , and after paying the next week’s rent at the rooming house, Bruce was left with around six hundred points.

He was, by every reasonable measure of his first four days, doing well.

He felt the small steady satisfaction of that. He did not let it become anything else.

They returned to the rooming house briefly to wash and change.

The state of them after a stone-dungeon day was rougher than after a heat-dungeon day , the mineral dust got everywhere. Bruce stood in the shared washing room and worked the soul-water carefully through his hair and across his soul-body’s skin, and he watched the pale grey residue rinse away into the drain.

When he came back to the room, Theron was sitting on the edge of his bed.

The young man was not summoning the scythe. He was just sitting, looking at his hands, with the small focused expression of someone working a thought through.

"Are you all right?" Bruce asked.

"Yes." Theron looked up. "I was thinking about your talent. What you discovered today."

"And?"

"You can write words and make them act on the realm."

"Apparently."

"So can the dungeon."

Bruce paused.

"The dungeon writes too?" he asked.

"The whole realm does. Or , something in it does. Look at us. We have ranks. We have grades. We have soul points. Words assigned to us by the system, with real effects. F-rank is a word. It’s also a real condition that limits what portals we can enter, what beasts we can face. Someone , or something , wrote the word F-rank onto us when we registered, and it became true."

Bruce sat down on his own bed slowly.

"The realm is written," he said.

"That’s what I’m wondering. If your talent is writing, and the realm is a written thing, then your talent doesn’t just work on objects in the realm. It works on the fabric of the realm. Which is , Bruce, that’s enormous."

Bruce stared at the small soul-stone wall opposite his bed.

He thought about it.

The Akashic Codex of the physical realm had said, before he descended, that the soul realm and the mind realm and the physical realm were each governed by a Codex , the three Codices being alter egos of the same being, the core of the universe. A Codex was a kind of book. A book was a written thing. If the realms were written by their Codices ,

If his talent was writing ,

If his talent could affect the fabric of a written realm ,

He set the thought down very carefully. It was too large to handle on the fourth day of a long climb. It belonged in the same file as the questions about why the Akashic Codex had not told him how to awaken his soul talent, and what the orb at the Guild had been overloading on, and why the realm had not stopped him from descending against its design.

The pile of large questions was getting deeper. He had no immediate way to answer any of them. He would build himself up, day by day, until he could.

For now: dinner.

"Theron," he said.

"Yes?"

"Don’t say what you just said to anyone else. Not yet. Not even Kael."

Theron nodded immediately. "I know. I figured."

"Thank you."

"Bruce ," Theron hesitated. "Are you in danger?"

Bruce thought about it.

"I am probably," he said, "going to become in danger. The realm will notice me eventually. When it does, I want to be strong enough to handle the noticing. Right now I am not. So I climb. And I am careful. And I do not write big words until I understand the small ones."

"Okay."

"Don’t worry about me. Worry about your own scythe and what it’s trying to tell you."

"I am worrying about it."

"Good."

Kael came in from his own wash, towel over his shoulders, and asked what they were being so quiet about. Bruce said talent practice. Kael accepted this without question. The three of them got dressed and went out into the deepening evening to go to the old soul’s place.

The old soul’s small eatery was lit warmer than the previous nights.

Two of the three outside tables were occupied this time , both by older awakened souls, sitting alone with small bowls, with the unhurried posture of regulars settling into their usual evening. One of them was the same older soul who had been there the previous night. The other was different. A tall thin soul with very pale skin and a deep steady glow.

Bruce noted both of them. Both glanced at him as the three hunters came through, and neither glance lingered. The two old regulars were having their own evening. They were not particularly interested in the hunters except as a passing fact.

Inside, the old soul was at the pot with the alpha flank.

anything Bruce had encountered in this realm or his last. The slow cooking had drawn the deep mineral richness of the alpha flank into something almost medicinal in its complexity , a smell that promised not just food but transformation. The kind of smell that made a hungry soul stop and pay attention, and a tired soul lift its head.

Theron made an involuntary sound as soon as they stepped inside.

The old soul, without looking up, said: "He notices loudly. As always."

"He does," Bruce said.

"Sit. It is ready."

They sat at the inside table. The old soul served them three small bowls , much smaller portions than the standard meal, because the alpha flank was much more concentrated. Each bowl held a delicate arrangement of the dark cooked meat over a thin pale grain, with a sauce that had a depth Bruce did not have language for, and a single sprig of an herb he did not recognize laid across the top.

***

A/N

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