Shtorrr sat in a tent, doing nothing. Punch lay on a bedroll nearby, doing nothing. The bandit queen had told them to go in the tent and do nothing. Shtorrr was bored. The bright light made it hard to sleep, even inside the tents. Punch was too injured to tell stories. Shtorrr knew lots of stories, but wasn''t good at saying the words. Shtorrr wanted to go out and hunt. It needed food to regrow its arm.
The squinting bandit entered the tent and told Shtorrr to come help. Shtorrr spent a minute explaining to the squinting bandit that it was supposed to stay in the tent because the bandit queen said so. The squinting bandit got mad and told Shtorrr that the bandit queen wanted it to help the wizard with something. Shtorrr looked at Punch for help, but he was still asleep. Shtorrr stood up and followed the squinting bandit.
They went over to a different tent. Borth was inside with the wizard. That was good, Borth usually said the same as the bandit queen. The wizard asked Shtorrr some questions, but the troll didn''t know any answers. The wizard didn''t seem upset, though. He kept smiling at Shtorrr. Shtorrr liked the wizard, it hoped it wouldn''t have to smash the wizard''s head someday.
Borth told Shtorrr to follow, and the group of four walked into the rain to the portal. They crossed the sandy floor and the forest floor to get to the portal to the hot floor. The wizard talked the entire time. At the portal to the hot floor, the squinty bandit gave Shtorrr some instructions and handed it a stick. Shtorrr held the stick in its one hand and stepped through the portal.
The other side of the portal was hot. Not hot like a fire, but hot like a pot of soup. Shtorrr jabbed the stick into the ground. A wave of frost exploded across the ground and snow began to fall in an area a few dozen strides across. In the deep red light, the snow looked like a pile of freshly ground meat. Shtorrr yanked its one remaining hand back from the stick, worried it would lose its other arm to some ice. Nothing else happened, so Shtorrr stepped back through the portal.
"Ice." It said. The wizard smiled at Shtorrr and nodded his head. Borth stepped through the portal to see for himself. He returned with a dusting of snow on his boots and a smile on his face. The wizard talked all the way back to the bandit camp. Shtorrr didn''t mind.
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Punch lay on his back, in agony. Every breath, no matter how shallow, shifted his shattered ribs. The muscles in his back spasmed from time to time as he fought to hold still. When he ran out of energy, he passed out from exhaustion. He woke some time later to continue the torture. Whenever he asked, Shtorrr picked him up and helped him relieve himself outside the tent. Punch was grateful to the troll, but couldn''t spend the energy to say so. Aside from holding still and struggling to breath evenly, Punch spent his energy hating the bandit queen, Zdeska.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
Punch tried to count how many bandits they had lost while following this particular bandit queen. Punch lost count, but he was certain it was around half of the original group. Punch remembered the excitement they all felt when they left their underground fortress. They were going to claim an interworld trade route. Interworld trade was the most lucrative of all trading, so they needed to claim the route before any other bandits tried to do the same. Zdeska had this all planned out.
Punch accepted a sip of water from Shtorrr before returning to his thoughts. Zdeska hadn''t planned for the attention a large group of bandits would receive, traveling in the open. They had run for days, trying to avoid capture by the head of the guard at some city Punch had never heard of. Zdeska had eventually lured the guards into some ruins and killed the head guard herself. The ruins had proven more deadly than the city guards. Sickness of some sort swept through the bandits. Many of them might have survived, but Zdeska forced them to march as they coughed up blood. Shelter, food, gear, weapons--none of these were in sufficient supply after the first few days of traveling.
Punch squeezed his eyes shut. It might be weeks before he could lead his team again, and his spear was nowhere to be found. He must have dropped it on that last dungeon floor, when a maddened troll punched him full strength in the chest.
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A white loop absorbed the sensory information that fell like rain in the dungeon mind space. The loop processed a few of the subtler inputs: vibration, difference in heat, and electromagnetic senses. The loop focused its light on the space above it and built out a potential branch as it observed: "heat, vibration, heat, electromagnetic". The potential branch collapsed as the pattern didn''t hold. The loops built another potential branch: "electromagnetic, vibration, touch, electromagnetic" But this potential branch also collapsed. The loop processed this for a while.
Eventually, the loop pulled in a few other loops and built a potential branch made from three potential branches woven together: "vibration-electromagnetic-heat" The three-fold potential branch resonated with much of the sensory input that fell on the loops. As the loops observed the potential branch, a trickle of energy flowed up from the plant instincts via the mushroom network: "other". The loops began to pass "other" back and forth. The concept was, by its nature, alien. The threefold potential branch grew and absorbed this new concept: "vibration-electromagnetic-heat, other". The loops wrote this insight into multiple memory branches.
The raven observed the loops. It could understand some of the concepts that the loops constantly passed back and forth, and this one made perfect sense. "Other, maybe raven!" The raven cawed to the loops. One of the nearby loops immediately sent back, "raven, curiosity". The raven flapped in mild surprise, but continued the conversation. "Ravens are best bird! Black feathers, sharp beak. Smart!" The raven cawed its own praises in satisfaction. The loop processed this for a while as the raven preened. Eventually, the loop asked, "bird, curiosity".