Jade's Backstory

Ch 3 - A Leather Book

   Jade, now twelve years old, was again wandering the forest. It was a foggy night, and the full moon illuminated his surroundings. It was a soundless, ominous night. "Son!" A voice calls from the distance; it echoes, and reverberates all around him, and yet, Jade knows exactly where it came from. He starts running towards the voice, leaping from rock to rock, pushing off of the tree trunks, jumping over the black spots on the floor. Those black spots were like bottomless pits. If he were to step in, he'd fall forever in eternal darkness- but there was no time for that. He kept pushing, running as fast as he could, pushing his strong, and agile seven-year-old body to it's limits. The forest started getting taller, the mud thicker, but the black spots were no longer something to worry about. Jade started tripping over the small things. Those sticks and stones that he would normally just step on or over were catching, grabbing his feet, and uncomfortably making the journey painful.. all while he was still fighting the mud. There was an orange-ish glow in the fog in front of him. It got stronger as he got closer, or perhaps he got weaker as the glow approached him? Either way, his sense of urgency was unchanged. Pushing through the mud, and nearly falling over every stick and stone, rushing past those things on the ground that he used to worry about, he was surprisingly not tired, nor cold, just struggling. At one point, the glow faded away all at once. "Someone, help!" There was the same voice. Much stronger, but the echo still remained. Jade stopped in place. Someone was in front of him. Someone he had grown fond of was chest-deep in the mud. It was like quick-sand, but quicker. By the time the five-year-old boy stumbled close, the man was neck-high in the mud. Jade went to grab at the man, and gone. This person was now nothing but a mere thought, a memory. What was once precious and living to Jade was now 6 feet under, and vulnerable to amnesia.  Jade started digging at the mud. Using just his small, stubby, bare fingers, he penetrated deep into the ground, and threw the mixture of water and dirt behind him. The mud was thick enough to be shaped, and dug into.  Each scoop of earth uncovered more, and more dirt. Deeper and deeper he went. Jade was full of despair, confusion, sadness, anger, and all sorts of other feelings. How did this happen so quickly? Why him? Of all people why him? It's not fair! This has to be fake. Not real.. it must be a practical joke played by the creator themselves! Please, don't leave me! Don't disappear! I need you! His emotions had full control of him now. He was putting everything his three-year-old body had into digging. Desperate to get this person back, he didn't even realize that he dug about two meters deep straight into his hole. That's when the rain started to pour. Jade had realized his fatal mistake, and tried clawing his way out of his hole. It was no use, as while the rain softened the ground, it was harder to grab hold of the walls of the hole. The water started filling up in the hole. Jade hoped that he would eventually be able to swim out of it. As he was thinking this, the ledge that he was trying so desperately to grab had instead, come to him. It fell all at once on his small, feeble, one-year-old body. He was unable to move, unable to see, unable to blink, unable to breath, unable to fight, unable to feel, unable to stay, unable to think, unable to stay awake, unable to stay asleep.
    Jade had woken in a cold sweat. He was staring out the window frame that used to be a cannon-ball sized hole. The sun shone through- not into Jade's eyes, as it was too low to do so. Still, the sun came through enough to highlight the dust in the air. It was morning. Jade quickly sat up to check that he was , and he is, still twelve years old.
    "Morning, Jade!" Dylan called out as the child came down the ladder. He was making breakfast, using a heat-stone (a magic stone found in naturally hot places) and a cast-iron pan to cook some eggs. "Mornin'." Jade replied. "Did you sleep alright? I heard quick a fuss up there." Dylan asked. Jade answers: "It was that stupid dream again. This time I shrunk for whatever reason." Jade sits down at a small wooden table for two. "Interesting. I'm guessing you fell into another hole?" Jade silently, and thoughtfully recalled the nightmare to himself. Dylan breaks the silence with "Ah well. Hopefully these pullus eggs will cheer you up." Dylan slides a plate to Jade. On the plate there's an omelet consisting of small (edible) mushrooms, molten cheese, some vegetables from the marketplace, of course wrapped in some fried eggs, and spiced to perfection. Jade digs in. The eggs were fried perfectly, and the meal overall brought his morning from dark and ominous, to warm and bright. Dylan had already finished his meal. "So earlier this morning, when I went to the market to get the vegetables, I saw they were setting up a new row of stands. They seemed really interesting to me, so I figured we could spend today checking them out after we sell the black-shrooms." Jade, ignoring the part about the market, replies with a disappointed "aww...  we're gathering today?" "You want another breakfast tomorrow, don't you? Finish up; The sooner we leave, the more time we'll have later in the day."
    Jade and Dylan had each brought an obnoxiously huge basket strapped on their backs. They trenched through the forest. The leaves moved around their feet, and with each step there was a satisfying crunch. It was maybe 7 o'clock in the morning, and a bit of the sun shined almost horizontally through the trees. Despite it being first thing in the morning, the weather outside was nice and cool, and the colors of Autumn painted the scene. As the two traveled further into the forest, they made sure to avoid getting too close to the trees. The black mushrooms tended to grow along tree trunks, so the two knew the safest path was furthest away from the trees. As Jade was trailing behind Dylan, his eyes wandered to his right. There was a swarm of flies that surrounded what was left of a bird. The bird in question had probably touched one of the black mushrooms, and was now suffering the consequences of settling in this forest. It's a shame how something so beautiful and elegant could be turned into a pile of fertilizer in a single moment, a single mistake. The bird's body belonged to the fungus now, as the spores had already sprouted around the feathers. Jade questions how safe it was to actually do this for a living. Sure, his clothes were enchanted to prevent any tragedies, but he had never tested the reliability of these so-called enchantments, nor does he plan to anytime soon.
    A blast from afar knocks Jade out of the clouds. Dylan stops for a bit to acknowledge the sound, then continues walking. How could Dylan be so calm about this? Aren't we actually walking through a literal minefield? Why doesn't this concern him? "Jade, we're here." Jade steps to the front. There was a small clearing where a bunch of rocks resided to block away the trees that wanted to grow there. In-between the many cracks and seams of these rocks grew an abundant amount of small, black shrooms. Too small to blow up, but big enough to contain a handful of black powder in each cap. Dylan bent down, grabbed around the stem of a mushroom, and plucked it right out of the ground. He tosses the mushroom behind his shoulder, where the basket catches it. Jade follows his lead, plucking mushrooms of a certain size, and throwing them behind his shoulder. Each pluck was one more out of the thousand shrooms they had on quota. Dylan planned to fill his entire basket, which was a lot to gather and carry; a lot of work for an old man. Jade was okay with the amount of work he had. His basket was only half as big, and he only needed to carry half as much; however, It still got really heavy for him. This prompted him to realized how much work Dylan was putting his back into. "Jade, come closer this way. You're getting to close to the edge." It would be so much easier for us both to just use magic for this. I've read about people who can simply lift things in the air, or better yet, command inanimate objects to do chores! Why can't we do the same? Why must we put so much back-breaking work into these things while others can do the same thing sitting down? A sudden gust of wind blows through the trees. It blows right through Jade's sweater.. It's cold. Dylan is unaffected, and keeps working at the same pace. Jade, on the other hand, slowed down a bit to compensate for his sudden discomfort with the temperature. He notices that he's now shivering, when he accidentally bumps the cap of a much larger mushroom. The black, reflective surface glows into a red, irritated color. The thing bursts, immediately tossing Jade 10 feet into the air, and onto his back. There was a loud ringing in his ears, and the muffled sounds of Dylan calling his name. As his vision eventually un-blurs, he can see Dylan kneeling above him. "Jade! I told you to keep away from the edge of the clearing! Are you okay?" He waves his hand over Jade's face. Jade's eyes follow, and he grabs Dylan's hand. "Thank god.. I guess those enchantments were a good investment." Jade peels himself out of the mud he landed in. It seems he's always finding new ways to get caked in the forest floor. "Jade? You got something on your face." Jade feels around his face with his hand, and realizes there's a flat piece of what feels like rubber on the numb part of his face. He pinches it, and it comes off. It's a piece of skin that blew off the mushroom like shrapnel. "It's only morning time, and you've somehow already gotten yourself brushed up." That would explain the numb spot. "Am I gonna be okay?" "It looks like it. Try standing up." Jade moves his legs, pivoting on his right arm to get up. He notices other numb spots on his hands and neck, only on the places of exposed skin. Since he's wearing both the pants and sweater from the enchantress, there was little damage to be mentioned. "I feel just fine!" "Good. I think we got enough mushrooms for the day, what do you think?" Jade realizes Dylan doesn't have the basket strapped to his back. He looks over where he was picking the mushrooms, and behold: Dylan's basket was completely filled to the brim. Jade realizes the basket on his back was flattened down from his fall, compressed to get rid of the empty space taking half of the inside, and crushed to smash the mushrooms almost through the fiber. "It's okay Jade, we can still salvage the black powder that- now that I think of it, miraculously didn't explode. I wonder if.? No, that's not how the enchantment works." "I must be lucky to not have ruined the stock then." "No, your lucky your accident wasn't any worse. Pay attention when I call your name!"
    Dylan grabbed his full basket, and Jade gathered a few of the mushrooms that fell out of his flattened basket, stashing them where he could on his body and what was left of the basket. The two made their way out of the forest, following the same path they used to traverse into the forest. Their footprints were made invisible from the leaves the trees have shed, but since Dylan takes the path often, he was able to lead the safest way out of the forest, and back to the edge of the woods where they lived. They set up underneath a shade on the side of the house, and started peeling the mushrooms to reveal the gunpowder. They loaded the powder into an expertly crafted bucket that was maybe two-thirds the size of Jade's basket. The skins were thrown into a wooden box to decompose. Time passed by quickly, as the two were way too used to spending hours of work doing this repetitive task. It took them until noon to finish peeling the mushrooms. The bucket was given an airtight lid, and was carried on the end of a stick. Dylan lifted the bucket-on-a-stick over his shoulder.
    "Come on Jade, we can check out the market while we sell this off!" The two were off to the market. Their house was isolated from the rest of the village, being divided by a peninsula of trees. The two went around, taking about ten minutes of walking until they hit the main road. It was a simple dirt road, but it was wide enough for a caravan to pass through. If you looked either way on the road, you could see people either coming from, or to the market-village. A few people with horses passed by, heading in the direction of the marketplace. The two followed, as they had the same destination. It didn't take long for Jade and Dylan to come across the first stand, which was selling fletching equipment. Bow strings of different strengths and durability, and arrows with different types of tips, including, but not limited to piercing arrows, enchanted arrows, and sticks with slices of black-shrooms on the end. There was also that one bow that was always on display. Supposedly it was something of legends, but nobody was interested- probably because it was a simple tree branch with what looked like a fishing line attached to it. Further down the road there were rows of stands, barely giving room for anything in-between. There were small crowds on the road, people often partied up in groups of three to five. It was loud with merchants bartering deals with passersby, advertisers demonstrating the abilities of magical items, and even some auctioneers calling out numbers and winners. It was almost overwhelming, but nonetheless, Jade maintained his composure. Further down the road, there was a split-off that wasn't there last week; the right side being entirely new, yet, as populated as the rest of the district. In the split of the intersection was a shady-looking stand, where a cloaked man stood behind. Behind him were a two piles of buckets that looked the exact same as the bucket Dylan was hanging behind his back. Dylan set the bucket down on the table in front of him, and the cloaked stranger exchanged the full bucket with another, much lighter bucket. It was the same on the outside, but inside, there were some gold coins serving as payment to those who exchanged the goods.
    As Dylan was trading buckets with the stranger, Jade ran off to the new part of the district, excited by what stands could've possibly taken the new space so fast. There were about fifty stands located in the new branch, mostly selling adventuring equipment such as weapons and armor for people of all kinds of classes and levels. Merchants not only haggled about the high prices on their items, but they also demonstrated the physical and magical abilities of weapons and armor. There was fierce competition in the air, as merchants would do anything to one-up any neighboring stands. A pair of merchants even jousted to really show the strength of their armor. This kind of merchandise attracted the very consumers that they were going for. There were more adventurers here than Jade had seen in his entire life. Again, these people usually partied in groups of three to five, but sometimes even more. Jade browsed the items, both amazed, and mystified. He looked through every stand, admired every piece of exotic armor and enchantment the stands had offered. There was this one stand that was filled with books and papers. The books were filled with ancient writing and symbols, and the papers were covered with runes and spells. Jade was just gonna glance over that stand, when something had caught his eye. Something that has been calling his name ever since he set eyes on it. Jade was staring at a leatherback book on display. On the front cover, the book had the magical symbol for "human" etched into the leather.
    Jade didn't have any money, and the heavy price tag on said book was gonna cost him and Dylan a fortune. He needed that book, and was determined to get ahold of it. He looked around for anything that could help him get it. To his left, he saw some mage-like adventurers looking through the selection, none of them interested in buying the books being sold. To his right, were the two jousting advertisers. They were on horses. Easily spook-able horses. Jade felt around in his pockets, and touched something smooth and squished. He pulled out what looked like a black piece of rubber. He connected the dots, and decided to throw the object in the middle of the pathway. The jousters were charging at each other. As one of the horses ran full charge at the other, a small, yet loud pop noise could be heard. It caught everyone's attention, some exclaimed, some simply looked, and others had stopped in place. The horse that stepped on it flew in the other direction. That very horse was now trotting full force into the rune-stall. Everyone in it's immediate path jumped/ran out of the way, including the merchant, who jumped into another stall that sold low-level armor sets. The clash and bangs that came from the collision consisted of the rune-merchant who had thrown himself out of the way, the sound of paper being torn, books slamming against the ground, cracks of the wooden stall breaking apart, and runes randomly going off. Everyone in the immediate vicinity (those mage-like adventures) had rushed towards the armor stand, crowding the merchant as he was trying to process what had happened, and recombobulate himself. The horse was running off past the stands with the first jouster still on it, trying (and failing) to get control. The second jouster ran through the torn-up rune stand on foot, throwing pieces of his armor as to lose weight, and get to his comrade faster. As everyone was distracted/preoccupied, Jade had taken advantage of the chaos. He ran into the stall with the second jouster, but instead of running past everything, he took a quick glance around. He had spotted the leather-backed book tucked under a shelf. Jade ran out before anyone drew suspicion over the thief.
    As Jade ran back to Dylan, he realized that Dylan would question where he got the book from. Jade tucked the book under his waistband, on his back, and covered it with his sweater. As long as he was always facing Dylan, there would be no suspicion to worry about. Jade didn't even get all the way back to the beginning of the adventurer's district when he ran into Dylan.
    "Aha! I knew you couldn't resist coming here!" Dylan enthusiastically exclaims. "Isn't it amazing? Definitely not like the rest of the marketplace. They've even got canned bread!" Dylan holds up a cylindrical chunk of metal with grooves bent into it. Jade sends a look of confusion. "That doesn't look like bread?" "Ah! Of course. I'll show you when we get home."
    The two proceeded to take the walk all the way through the adventurer's district. Jade had gone halfway through by himself before finding the book, so he was yet to explore the rest of the way through. As they two passed by the rune shop, the merchant was counting his inventory in the now roof-less stall. Jade looks away in shame.
    The rest of the strip were mostly the same sights as before. Aside from the canned bread Dylan had got, he also bought a few cheap magical items to look at later. The two got caught in a conversation with a party of four, gaining information about why the strip was assembled. It was to accommodate the recent surge of adventurers taking the trade route southwards along the trail. The only known reason they could figure out for the surge was the appearance of a mythical item, but this was only rumored.
    The end of the strip joined back into the main marketplace,  creating a loop with two ways out; northward, and southward. Jade and Dylan were at the southern part of the district.
    "Well, I guess that's all they had to offer, not that it wasn't much." Dylan tells Jade. The child replies: "What are you gonna do with all those things?" Jade's referring to the stash of items in Dylan's bucket. "Ah, these trinkets? I'm going to take them apart, and see how they work. Supposedly, they use magical energy, so I figured they could maybe help is out if we reverse-engineered it!" "How would that work?" "I'll show you."
    The sun was at it's highest now. The outside feels warm, and the colors are just that much brighter. The two headed back north, where they encountered the path. They took a turn to the right, where the peninsula of trees ended. Going along the line of the forest, they found their way back home. Dylan brought the bucket inside the lab, and emptied it on his desk. The leftover coins clattered around all the trinkets, gizmos, and consumables that were dumped. "Now, to test this thing out." Dylan grabbed what looked like a painted smoothed-out horseshoe with a switch in the middle of the curve. He flicked it the switch, and with a loud crash, it flew out of his hand, and into the grooved metallic cylinder. Along the horseshoe's way, it had picked up all 19 gold coins that were on the table, along with the 7 silver coins that were exchanged as change. It was so fast though, it took both of them a few minutes to process what had happened. Dylan broke the silent with "Wait a minute, none of these metals are ferro. I need to look at their composit-" "What was that?" The child interrupted. "That was supposed to be some type of magnet, but it had an 'on' switch." "How?" "No clue. I'm going to saw it open and see what's inside- wait, that might be a little rash. I should melt the paint off in case there are runes hidden on it."
    Dylan walks over to the heatless-forge, and sets the machine to only melt off half a millimeter from the surface of the magnet. "Because this is gonna be a delicate process, it might take a while. In the meantime.. Jade, take this, and see if it works." Dylan hands Jade a stick with a wrapped handle. "Point this at any mushrooms you see to neutralize them. Supposedly, I can undo it if I need to, but I'd rather you be safer when you go explore the forest." "Okay. I'll go point to one, and try to set the mushroom off to see if it works!" Jade starts off, when he is stopped by Dylan grabbing at his shoulder. Wait, did he see my book? Oh no, I forgot I had it! I turned my back on him, and he saw it! Dylan interrupts Jade's thoughts: "From a safe distance, alright?" "A-... Y-Yes. I'll be careful." "Okay. Now go!" And off the child goes, turning the corner of the door right away to prevent Dylan from looking at him for too long.