Ortai Legacy: Arrival

7.4 - Grassland (L)

[Walk!] Duskfeather jumped to her hooves and accompanied me away from the others.

I headed in the direction Cadmus had gone, certain that Mar'kost could easily catch up with me as soon as he was done with Raeve. [Do you know how to get home?]

[Yes.] She leapt a good ten feet into the air, clearing the grass before landing gently in the same spot. [This way.] She trotted slowly enough that I could keep up.

[You're a great jumper. Can all drykons jump like you?]

[No, some jump bigger. Some jump smaller. Some fly—like big birds.]

[Are the big birds a type of drykon?]

[Yes.] She sent me a blurry image of an enormous white bird with a crimson head crest and flight feathers. The 'bird' seemed to be supporting some of their weight with their wings.

Maybe I could ride one to collect all the other Ortai from Earth. Well, I'd probably need more than one drykon to carry all of them. And it wasn't like I could just kidnap the drykons; if they didn't want to help me, I would have to come up with something to entice them. With the money Weylan had mentioned, I could buy a really good steak. [Do drykons eat meat?]

[Birds do.]

That was good and bad news. Enticing the flying drykons with good steak would be easier than doing it with 'good grass'—whatever that would be—but it also meant that I would have to provide meat throughout our entire journey. The cost would add up quickly.

[How much money is on the ship?] I asked Weylan.

[As of the last inventory, there are chips worth approximately forty million units.]

My mind went blank, and I nearly tripped over Duskfeather's hooves. Scrambling to stay upright, I forced myself to calm down. There was no guarantee that a unit was worth nearly as much as a dollar. It could be the equivalent of a penny for all I knew. Though, that would still be like four hundred thousand dollars.

[How much bread could I buy with a unit?]

[I have no knowledge of current bread prices.]

[Well, how much bread could it buy back when the real Weylan was alive?]

[One unit could buy 18.5 loaves of bread.]

That would've been great if we were living over two centuries ago. If we assumed inflation happened at about the same rate here as it did back home, a unit would be what, less than a loaf of bread? Assuming bread was three dollars... There was no way I could accurately do this in my head. [Hey, assume inflation continued at the same rate it was going before the Ortai disappeared. How much would those chips be worth now?]

[Approximately 1.48 billion units.]

[I don't mean how much 40 million units from back then would be equivalent to today; I mean, how much are the actual chips on the ship worth today?]

[Unless chips are no longer the standard of value for paper currency, the chips on Veil Piercer are worth approximately 1.48 billion units.]

[Prip.] Mar'kost's voice made me jump.

I looked around, but all I saw was grass. [Hello...?]

He chuckled sheepishly. [I'm following at a distance to mind Raeve. Anyway, if that count is accurate, we won't have to worry about Zephyr's scout team finding the ship. We can buy the rights for it.]

[That's-] I was about to say 'great,' but something occurred to me. [Weylan, are all the chips in the same place?]

[No. Chips worth 125 million units are located in the Vault near the Mess Hall. The other chips are distributed throughout the ship.]