A bit of wiggling movement caught the corner of his eye, and he glanced over.
There was a stick lying in the grass, partially rotted, and covered with worms that seemed to be having a grand time wiggling all over it.
“weird,” Jeb muttered, crawling over to it and picking it up. It was about as thick as his wrist, and covered with dark spots of rot, a foot long and bearing a stub where a smaller branch was sheared away. It was just a stick, but the worms didn’t obediently fall off when he picked it up, either, clinging with uncharacteristic tenacity.
“What’s weird?” Jessica asked, glancing back at him.
Jeb held the stick up so she could see it.
“So? It’s a stick.”
“You don’t see the worms?”
“What worms?”
“Here,” Jeb said, crawling over to her and holding it up for her to inspect. She glanced down at the stick for a moment, then looked him in the eye.
“What worms?” she asked.
Jeb held the stick closer to his face, blinking and trying to clear his vision. There were definitely worms on the stick. Idly he tried to scrape them off, sloughing the worms off onto the ground, where they…faded away.
Worms emerged from the stick, once again clasping tight to the rotted wood.
“Oookaaay,” Jeb said, eyeing the ghost-worms.
“Okay, what?”
“You should really raise your Myst,” Jeb said, glancing over at her.
“And start talking to myself?” She waggled her hand. “I’m good.”
Hmm. Myst lens… Maybe…
Jeb siphoned Myst out of his core, then pushed it through the rotten stick.
He watched as the Myst poured into the rotten stick, then refracted outwards in a thousand different directions like motes of light.
Imagine this: A piece of polished glass shaped exactly like a rotted stick. You put light into it, and the bumpy and crooked nature of the stick causes the light to scatter in every direction.
That was exactly what happened to the Myst Jeb put into the worm-stick. It scattered in every direction like beams of light, peppering everything in the vicinity with tiny motes of Myst.
Everywhere one of these motes landed, a worm was created – a real goddamn earthworm – filling the clearing with thousands of the wriggling bastards.
Needless to say, tons of motes landed on Jeb and Jessica, as well as the tree branches above them.
Jess actually made the first girlish squeal Jeb had ever heard her make as dozens of worms rained down from the branches above, landing on her shaved scalp before wriggling around in irritation.
Jeb’s girlish squeal wasn’t far behind hers, honestly.
“Ack, son of a bitch!” Jeb shouted, scrambling out of the low-hanging canopy and brushing himself off violently, while Jessica did her own little ants-in-the-pants dance off to the side.
Once they were worm-free, Jeb looked at the stick more closely.
“You know, I think this is-“
“Don’t say it,” Jessica warned, pointing her sword at him threateningly.
“ – the fairy cornucopia,” Jeb finished, inspecting it further. Finally, he felt something kick in behind his eyes, revealing the object’s identity to him.
Raw Worm-Summoning Myst Lens (gargantuan)
These finger-length sticks coalesce in areas of dim light and natural decay, and have been used by Fairy clans for generations to guarantee a source of food in even the leanest times.
The farmers of Pharos will often hire shamans with these lenses to bless their fields, as worms will greatly enhance the quality of the soil as they go through their life cycle underground.
Jeb glanced back under the low-hanging branches.
He hadn’t noticed before, but one of the worms was a good two feet long, wiggling vigorously, as big around as his thumb, while some others were tiny and nearly hair-thin.
Did it depend on how big the mote was? He thought, looking back at the stick. The information said they were supposed to be the size of a finger, and that his was gargantuan.
I think I’ll hang onto this.
Jessica sighed. “I’m only eating worms if the alternative is violent death or starvation.”
“Fair enough,” Jeb said, tucking the worm-stick in his belt, right next to his cleaning stick before consulting the map.
Newly alerted to the fact that the map was written from a fairy’s point of view, Jeb consulted their next location more judiciously, skipping things like ‘super amazing flying machine’ or ‘heavy artillery’. If the cornucopia summoned worms, chances were the flying machine could fit a couple fairies if they were lucky, and the heavy artillery probably fired nuts.
He focused on things they knew would benefit them: Bosses, stat-boosting treasure, and Myst lenses.
A few hundred meters away was a ‘dungeon’ of ‘giant’ flesh-devouring beetles. Chances were they weren’t actually that big.
The dungeon itself was a small, one room affair, and it was said to guard a human relic, some kind of circlet that increased Nerve.
If they could get that, his Nerve might be high enough to attempt the sirens to the south.
Defeat them, and then they could go north or west. Jeb hoped soloing the Siren boss would give award him the extra Nerve he needed to stay competitive, but if it didn’t, he’d reluctantly drop a few points from his levels into the trait.
Not being able to see Jessica move was a bit eye-opening, and the stealthy creatures to the North and West demanded a great deal of Nerve to spot before they ambushed.
Jeb didn’t wanna get diced up or poisoned before he knew what was going on. That meant he had to take the forest’s bosses in the appropriate order.
But first, we’re gonna see if we can’t get this crown-thing.
The dungeon itself wasn’t hard to find. It was a raised, barrow-like mound of dirt with a cavernous entrance leading into darkness.
When he shined a light into the
