Chapter Three - A View of the Future

“Now, after all those preliminary little things, Alex my newly made butler and I finally took off into the great unknown. It’s about then that I ran into your sort of people.”

***

I never liked the open sky.

Not that I disliked it for any rational reason. I am a man of science, and I can take a moment to ponder my own beliefs and thoughts to see why I feel the way I do about certain things. Long ago, I discovered that the reason I dislike the open sky is two fold.

One, the sky, as limitless and grand as it is, reminds me keenly of the depth of knowledge that I lack. Beyond the sky is space, and there lies planets and moons and stars. Worlds to explore and discover, and possibilities that are, quite literally, endless. The gods once resided in their celestial homes, close to the edge of space itself, as if mocking us below with their greater power.

One day, perhaps, I would go out there and seek out a new home in the stars. I would find new purposes and make new discoveries. But that was always a distance, abstract kind of goal for me.

Two, I disliked the sky because the sunlight was too bright, the night too dark to read in, and it tended to rain on occasion which ruined my books.

The open sky above was a blue tinged to green, the sun right overhead and as bright as ever. Few clouds, and those small and pitiful.

I lowered the hand I had placed over my brow and took in our surroundings. The area was not the lush forest that I could recall. Perhaps two thousand years had done away with the woods, or maybe some enterprising locals had cut the woods down some centuries ago.

All that was left was scrubland as far as I could see. Open fields of soft, dead soil, and a few scraggly, tough bushes. The little stream running out of the cavern passed by my feet and made its way downhill towards a thin crevice that sliced across the land.

“Looks like we have our work cut out for us, Alex.”

“Yes, Papa Harold,” Alex said.

The wise thing to do would be to follow the water. Just about every civilised group I’d found, from humans to orcs, to those high-strung elves, needed water to live, and so following a stream was often the best way to find a village, or at least a lake.

The even wiser thing to do was to cast a spell that could point you in the right direction. I raised my hand, cupping it before me as raw magic gathered above my palm.

“Mass Detect Life.”

The magic burst away in a surge, a wave that shot out and formed a grand dome that raced across the scrublands and past the visible horizon. Almost instantly, I could feel the pings of the spell going off as it encountered life. From tiny insects, to innocent mammals to bigger predators.

My eyes dimmed as I took it all in.

“Ah, I see. That way, Alex,” I said as I pointed off to our left. My magic had run across quite the gathering of lifeforms, all bunched close together. There were others, of course, but if I was going to take my time and walk, then I’d want to reach the nearest settlement before nightfall.

“Okay, Papa.”

“Can’t you call me sir?” I asked. “It would be far more dignified.”

“Okay, sir Papa.”

You might be wondering, oh, Harold, why would you walk? Are you not powerful to avoid such trivialities? And you would, for once, be quite correct.

The problem with teleporting all over, or with using arcane flight or even using fleet foot spells, is that you miss out on the opportunity to observe.

There is no skill greater for the budding scientist than that of observation! To properly draw factual conclusions, one must be able to observe reality as it is.

Observation takes time, of course, and some effort. Time that I had plenty of. Not needing to eat anything, not needing to sleep, and generally being immortal, means that I have grown somewhat fond of doing things at my own pace.

Alex and I made our way uphill, then took a moment to observe the wider world revealed by our climb. It was quite desolate, with a lot of nothing for kilonecrometers around. “Well, this is dull,” I admitted after a moment.

“Yes,” Alex agreed.

“We’ll take a few samples from these bushes, maybe from the local wildlife, then be on our way,” I decided.

It turned out that my initial findings were more interesting than I had presumed. The first bush from which I took a cutting (with a small use of a cutting spell) revealed great thorns hidden beneath its leafy canopy, and branches that were thicker than I would have assumed at first glance.

There was magic in these bushes. Latent and calm for now, but present.

More intriguing yet, the magic had a certain necromantic flair to it.

A rustle farther away revealed a small rabbit bouncing along at some speed away from a dark brown fox. The rabbit obviously had a few magical tricks at its disposal, as it frequently teleported between jumps.

I was content to observe the chase for a while, seeing the fox salivating after its prey and the rabbit deftly avoiding the fox’s teeth.

The rabbit made a mistake, one turn going too wide and leaving it to rub against one of the shrubs dotting the landscape. The plant twitched, leaves parted, and in a blink the rabbit was captured and being pulled into the bush’s branches while kicking and screaming.

The fox stopped its run and seemed quite disappointed before it scampered off.

“Fascinating,” I said.

The bush was using a simple, primitive form of drain life.

A fabricated plant, perhaps? Nature did not usually enjoy the presence of undeath, and for the most part such evolutions would be wiped out in short order. The only plausible explanation was long term growth in an area with powerful and subtle necromantic magics.

I glanced in the general direction of my tomb.

“Oh my,” I said.

“Sir Papa Harold?”

“It’s nothing,” I said. It wouldn’t be the first time I accidentally destabilized an entire ecosystem, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. “Do try not to touch the bushes.”

They seemed not to react to our passing, so it was quite possible that as undead we simply were not on the figurative menu. It did make for a wonderful reason to avoid the area. Perhaps that was why I had been undisturbed for so long? Why civilization had not marched its way to my doorstep.

After marching on for some time, I unfortunately grew quite bored.

I wanted to see civilization once more! To see the progress humanity and the other intelligent races had made! I could imagine great spires and bountiful lands. Machines that did the work of a hundred farmers so that resources would be plentiful and the common man could spend the evenings in joyful scientific pursuits.

Two thousand years of advancement!

I wondered if the sentient races of the world had reached the stars yet, or perhaps only our local moon? Had there been great strides in biological magics? What of the material sciences?

“Alex, I do believe we will take something of a shortcut.”

“Oh?” Alex asked.

“Indeed. Just a quick portal ahead of us. Nothing too grand. I do want to arrive while the sun is still high.”

I was certain that any proper city would have lights, of course, torches, perhaps even using harnessed lightning elementals or some arcane trickery that would allow one to work and live in the night, but I didn’t want to ruin the moment where I’d see it by arriving in the night nonetheless.

Coming to a stop in the lee of a rocky outcropping, I began to focus on the crafting of a short-lived portal. Nothing extravagant, just a small rip in space leading into a tunnel that would tear open an opposite hole elsewhere.

“Open Portal.”

A green slash appeared before us, filled with darting stars and a twisting miasma of writhing magic. I gestured within. “Go on now, Alex,” I said.

Alex nodded and hopped into the portal.

When I didn’t feel my necromantic bond with the butler disintegrate, I stepped in myself. A moment later I was spat out the other side and collided with Alex’s back.

“Sorry bone Papa!” Alex said as he spun around and started brushing off my clothes.

“No need,” I said as I dismissed the portal with a gesture. “Hardly your fault. I should have waited a moment more. I might be a little eager.”

A glance around revealed that my exit portal had brought us to a rockier, more hilly area. Still scrubland, with few plants in sight, and none of those dangerous bushes I’d seen before, but there was some grass and a few hardy weeds poking out from next to all the rocks.

All I needed to get my bearings was a moment, then I gestured off towards civilisation. “Well, off we go again!”

My first glimpse of any sort of civilisation came as we climbed to the top of a particularly steep hill. There was something in the distance, a small lake, with a walled compound next to it and a village beyond that. There was a quaint little water wheel, and some plowed fields all around.

Smoke rose into the sky from a few buildings, and while I couldn’t make them out from afar, I could tell that there were people moving about.

“Looks rather... quaint,” I said.

“Small?” Alex asked.

“Indeed. I was hoping for something more.” Still, it probably made sense that people would avoid building so close to such an inhospitable place. This was likely little more than a stopping point for travellers heading out, or perhaps a small village growing around a research centre.

Perhaps, once we’d been welcomed into the town, we’d find some way to travel to the next city with some alacrity. I had once contemplated creating a world-spanning gate hub that would facilitate transportation. No doubt someone had engineered something akin to that already.

Hopes still high, I began making my way down hill. “Are you looking forward to meeting people, Alex?” I asked.

Being undead did make talking and walking at the same time somewhat easier. There was no tiring these old bones.

“Yes!” Alex said. “New Papas and maybe other people too.”

“Hmm, I’m afraid that that isn’t exactly how things work,” I said. “You should have an instinct for this kind of thing, unless I’m even rustier with undead magics than I could possibly fear.”

“Lots of new people to meet and be polite to. I can serve tea to everyone?” Alex asked.

I really would need to take a look at his stats. The way he spoke I was afraid that perhaps Intelligence had turned into his dump stat, and that was unforgivable. “Remind me to get you some items to raise your stats.”

“I’d like a nice maid outfit,” Alex said.

I blinked. “Alex, you’re a butler, not a maid.”

“Aww,” Alex said.

“Now now, no whining.” I gestured out ahead. “We have people out ahead of us. You wouldn’t want to look bad. And as for your clothes, we will find something more appropriate in-town, I’m certain. Even a backwater like this ought to have a tailor.”

As we wound our way downhill, we slowly crossed out of the scrublands, and into an area where there was grass and proper trees. Yellowed, dying grass, and pitiful trees that seemed starved for water, but they were certainly present.

And beyond that, fields and farms and people at long last.

My bones were practically quivering with excitement.

***